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The Pursuit of God
"Then shall we know,
if we follow on to know the Lord:
his going forth is prepared as the morning."
HOSEA 6:3
by A. W. Tozer
introduction by
Dr. Samuel M. Zwemer
CHRISTIAN PUBLICATIONS, INC. HARRISBURG, PA.
COPYRIGHT MCMXLVIII BY CHRISTIAN PUBLICATIONS, INC.
_Printed in United States_
Contents
Introduction 5
Preface 7
I Following Hard after God 11
II The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing 21
III Removing the Veil 33
IV Apprehending God 49
V The Universal Presence 61
VI The Speaking Voice 73
VII The Gaze of the Soul 85
VIII Restoring the Creator-creature Relation 99
IX Meekness and Rest 109
X The Sacrament of Living 117
Introduction
Here is a masterly study of the inner life by a heart thirsting after
God, eager to grasp at least the outskirts of His ways, the abyss of His
love for sinners, and the height of His unapproachable majesty--and it
was written by a busy pastor in Chicago!
Who could imagine David writing the twenty-third Psalm on South Halsted
Street, or a medieval mystic finding inspiration in a small study on the
second floor of a frame house on that vast, flat checker-board of
endless streets
Where cross the crowded ways of life
Where sound the cries of race and clan,
In haunts of wretchedness and need,
On shadowed threshold dark with fears,
And paths where hide the lures of greed ...
But even as Dr. Frank Mason North, of New York, says in his immortal
poem, so Mr. Tozer says in this book:
Above the noise of selfish strife
We hear Thy voice, O Son of Man.
My acquaintance with the author is limited to brief visits and loving
fellowship in his church. There I discovered a self-made scholar, an
omnivorous reader with a remarkable library of theological and
devotional books, and one who seemed to burn the midnight oil in pursuit
of God. His book is the result of long meditation and much prayer. It is
not a collection of sermons. It does not deal with the pulpit and the
pew but with the soul athirst for God. The chapters could be summarized
in Moses' prayer, "Show me thy glory," or Paul's exclamation, "O the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" It is
theology not of the head but of the heart.
There is deep insight, sobriety of style, and a catholicity of outlook
that is refreshing. The author has few quotations but he knows the
saints and mystics of the centuries--Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas
a Kempis, von Huegel, Finney, Wesley and many more. The ten chapters are
heart searching and the prayers at the close of each are for closet, not
pulpit. _I felt the nearness of God while reading them._
Here is a book for every pastor, missionary, and devout Christian. It
deals with the deep things of God and the riches of His grace. Above
all, it has the keynote of sincerity and humility.
_Samuel M. Zwemer_
New York City
Preface
In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears:
within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found
increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a
growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities
and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with
correct "interpretations" of truth. They are athirst for God, and they
will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of
Living Water.
This is the only real harbinger of revival which I have been able to
detect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the size
of a man's hand for which a few saints here and there have been looking.
It can result in a resurrection of life for many souls and a recapture
of that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, that
wonder which has all but fled the Church of God in our day.
But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders. Current
evangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided the
sacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones and
rearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fire
upon the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a few
who care. They are those who, while they love the altar and delight in
the sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continued
absence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to taste
for themselves the "piercing sweetness" of the love of Christ about Whom
all the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing.
There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly the
principles of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seem
satisfied to teach the fundamentals of the faith year after year,
strangely unaware that there is in their ministry no manifest Presence,
nor anything unusual in their personal lives. They minister constantly
to believers who feel within their breasts a longing which their
teaching simply does not satisfy.
I trust I speak in charity, but the lack in our pulpits is real.
Milton's terrible sentence applies to our day as accurately as it did to
his: "The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed." It is a solemn thing,
and no small scandal in the Kingdom, to see God's children starving
while actually seated at the Father's table. The truth of Wesley's words
is established before our eyes: "Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, at
best, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannot
subsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist without
right tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either love
or one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this."
Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agencies
for the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions of
people who hold "right opinions," probably more than ever before in the
history of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when true
spiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Church
the art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has come
that strange and foreign thing called the "program." This word has been
borrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type of
public service which now passes for worship among us.
Sound Bible exposition is an imperative _must_ in the Church of the
Living God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any
strict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in such
way as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishment
whatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God
Himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal
experience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bible
is not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate and
satisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they may
delight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of the
very God Himself in the core and center of their hearts.
This book is a modest attempt to aid God's hungry children so to find
Him. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discovery
which my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful and
wonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holy
mysteries than I have done, but if my fire is not large it is yet real,
and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.
A. W. Tozer Chicago, Ill. June 16, 1948
I
_Following Hard after God_
My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth
me.--Psa. 63:8
Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which
briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must
first have sought the man.
Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have
been a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but a
true work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seeking
and praying which may follow.
We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge within
us that spurs us to the pursuit. "No man can come to me," said our Lord,
"except the Father which hath sent me draw him," and it is by this very
prevenient _drawing_ that God takes from us every vestige of credit for
the act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, but
the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and all
the time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: "Thy right hand
upholdeth me."
In this divine "upholding" and human "following" there is no
contradiction. All is of God, for as von Huegel teaches, _God is always
previous_. In practice, however, (that is, where God's previous working
meets man's present response) man must pursue God. On our part there
must be positive reciprocation if this secret drawing of God is to
eventuate in identifiable experience of the Divine. In the warm language
of personal feeling this is stated in the Forty-second Psalm: "As the
hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O
God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come
and appear before God?" This is deep calling unto deep, and the longing
heart will understand it.
The doctrine of justification by faith--a Biblical truth, and a blessed
relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort--has in our time
fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as
actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of
religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may
now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without
embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" without
creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The man
is "saved," but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he is
specifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content with
little.
The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; we
Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of His
Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be
cultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be able
to know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality by
another cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long and
loving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can be
explored.
All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personality
to personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between man
and man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soul
is capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence the
response of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God.
"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills,
enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may. In
making Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern of
personality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds,
our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassed
interchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemed
man is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion.
This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in conscious
personal awareness. It is personal: that is, it does not come through
the body of believers, as such, but is known to the individual, and to
the body through the individuals which compose it. And it is conscious:
that is, it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and work
there unknown to the soul (as, for instance, infant baptism is thought
by some to do), but comes within the field of awareness where the man
can "know" it as he knows any other fact of experience.
You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Being
made in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In our
sins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us to
life in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leaps
up in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which we
cannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but an
inception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart's happy
exploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where we
begin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there is
in the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit nor
end.
Shoreless Ocean, who can sound Thee?
Thine own eternity is round Thee,
Majesty divine!
To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love,
scorned indeed by the too-easily-satisfied religionist, but justified in
happy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernard
stated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantly
understood by every worshipping soul:
We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still:
We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead
And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
Come near to the holy men and women of the past and you will soon feel
the heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayed
and wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, and
when they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the long
seeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing
Him better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy
sight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace
in thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "I
beseech thee, show me thy glory." God was frankly pleased by this
display of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, and
there in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him.
David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring with
the cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessed
the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. "That
I may know Him," was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificed
everything. "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have
suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that I
may win Christ."
Hymnody is sweet with the longing after God, the God whom, while the
singer seeks, he knows he has already found. "His track I see and I'll
pursue," sang our fathers only a short generation ago, but that song is
heard no more in the great congregation. How tragic that we in this dark
day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made
to center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term,
incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected
thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have
been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we
have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the
last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught
Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the
worshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply set
aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant
saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which
would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a
Brainerd.
In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice to
acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will admit
the force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt some
lonely place and pray, "O God, show me thy glory." They want to taste,
to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that
is God.
I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack
of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden
quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy
desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute
desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to
His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits
so long, so very long, in vain.
Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age of
religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found
among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a world
of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never
satisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our inner
experience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation of
the world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, in
this day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely at
all.
If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must first
determine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now as
always God discovers Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick
darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to
Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be
blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with
the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will
quickly respond.
When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need other
than God Himself. The evil habit of seeking _God-and_ effectively
prevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies our
great woe. If we omit the "and" we shall soon find God, and in Him we
shall find that for which we have all our lives been secretly longing.
We need not fear that in seeking God only we may narrow our lives or
restrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. We
can well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice the
many for the One.
The author of the quaint old English classic, _The Cloud of Unknowing_,
teaches us how to do this. "Lift up thine heart unto God with a meek
stirring of love; and mean Himself, and none of His goods. And thereto,
look thee loath to think on aught but God Himself. So that nought work
in thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work of
the soul that most pleaseth God."
Again, he recommends that in prayer we practice a further stripping down
of everything, even of our theology. "For it sufficeth enough, a naked
intent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself." Yet
underneath all his thinking lay the broad foundation of New Testament
truth, for he explains that by "Himself" he means "God that made thee,
and bought thee, and that graciously called thee to thy degree." And he
is all for simplicity: If we would have religion "lapped and folden in
one word, for that thou shouldst have better hold thereupon, take thee
but a little word of one syllable: for so it is better than of two, for
even the shorter it is the better it accordeth with the work of the
Spirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE."
When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel Levi received no
share of the land. God said to him simply, "I am thy part and thine
inheritance," and by those words made him richer than all his brethren,
richer than all the kings and rajas who have ever lived in the world.
And there is a spiritual principle here, a principle still valid for
every priest of the Most High God.
The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many
ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them,
the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be
necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he
will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things
he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever he
may lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, and
he has it purely, legitimately and forever.
_O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and
made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of further
grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want
to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more
thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Thee
indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul,
"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away." Then give me grace to
rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so
long. In Jesus' Name, Amen._
II
_The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing_
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of
heaven.--Matt. 5:3
Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by
creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and
delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply
"things." They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to
be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the
man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was
God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.
But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts of
God a potential source of ruin to the soul.
Our woes began when God was forced out of His central shrine and
"things" were allowed to enter. Within the human heart "things" have
taken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for God
is crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn and
aggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on the
throne.
This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our real
spiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root
of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets
"things" with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns "my" and "mine"
look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is
significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better
than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms
of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into
_things_, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have
become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's
gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset
by the monstrous substitution.
Our Lord referred to this tyranny of _things_ when He said to His
disciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and
take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall
lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it."
Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, it
would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at
our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the
_self-life_. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words
"gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the
end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's
sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life
eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective
way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross
and follow me."
The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul
poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the
Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have
rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the "poor in
spirit." They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward
circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is
what the word "poor" as Christ used it actually means. These blessed
poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of _things_. They have broken
the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but
by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet
possess all things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood as
mere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inert
mass of other doctrines. It is a marker on the road to greener pastures,
a path chiseled against the steep sides of the mount of God. We dare not
try to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We must
ascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress to
an end.
As is frequently true, this New Testament principle of spiritual life
finds its best illustration in the Old Testament. In the story of
Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life as
well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude.
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his
grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his
heart. From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny form
awkwardly in his arms he was an eager love slave of his son. God went
out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is
not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his
father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the
years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood
to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer
with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon
the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and
son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.
"Take now thy son," said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whom
thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there
for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee
of." The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on
the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but
respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive
wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than
Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit
a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die.
That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to
die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with
God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his
dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live
to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of
God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.
How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his
wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the
promise, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"? This was Abraham's trial
by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still
shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac
lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the
old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had
directed him to do, and _then trust God to raise him from the dead_.
This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart
found sometime in the dark night, and he rose "early in the morning" to
carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to
God's method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And
the solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture, "Whosoever
will lose for my sake shall find."
God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where
He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand
upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, "It's
all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the
lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I
might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that
existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him
and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that
thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me."
Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, "By myself have
I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast
not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless
thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the
heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall
possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."
The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood
there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by the
Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most High. Now
he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who
possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear
son, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the
margin of Abraham's life and worked inward to the center; He chose
rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of
separation. In dealing thus He practiced an economy of means and time.
It hurt cruelly, but it was effective.
I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man
rich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep,
camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his
friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had
everything, but _he possessed nothing_. There is the spiritual secret.
There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in
the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook
this, but the wise will understand.
After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words "my" and
"mine" never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of
possession which they connote was gone from his heart. _Things_ had been
cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner
heart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich," but the
aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew
that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal.
There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of
the most harmful habits in the life. Because it is so natural it is
rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings are
tragic.
We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out of
fear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures are
loved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lord
came not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit to
Him, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed.
Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should be
recognized for what they are, God's loan to us, and should never be
considered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim credit
for special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. "For who
maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst
not receive?"
The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will
recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to
find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough
within him he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what
should he do?
First of all he should put away all defense and make no attempt to
excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever
defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no
other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for
his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian
trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and
insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.
Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless or
casual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in full determination
to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take
_things_ out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he
will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names
one by one. If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time of
his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before
his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in
their dealings with God.
Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote
as one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be
_experienced_ before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live
through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the
blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out
painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die
obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant
from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from
the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ
expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel
ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing
out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.
If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of
renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner
or later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing was, at the time, not
known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one
he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been
different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to
Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought
one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are
there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices
for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be
conditioned by the choice we make.
_Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its
toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try
to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do
come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished
so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that
Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make
the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the
sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall
be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen._
III
_Removing the Veil_
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus.--Heb. 10:19
Among the famous sayings of the Church fathers none is better known than
Augustine's, "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are
restless till they find rest in Thee."
The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior history
of the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanation
that satisfies the _heart_ of a thinking man, whatever his wild reason
may say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man to
conclude otherwise, there is little that any Christian can do for him.
For such a man I have no message. My appeal is addressed to those who
have been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak to
thirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God
within them, and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restless
hearts furnish all the proof they need.
God formed us for Himself. The _Shorter Catechism_, "Agreed upon by the
Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster," as the old _New-England
Primer_ has it, asks the ancient questions _what_ and _why_ and answers
them in one short sentence hardly matched in any uninspired work.
"_Question_: What is the chief End of Man? _Answer_: Man's chief End is
to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." With this agree the four and
twenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth for
ever and ever, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and
honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure
they are and were created."
God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as He
can in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling of
kindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and draw
our life from His smile. But we have been guilty of that "foul revolt"
of which Milton speaks when describing the rebellion of Satan and his
hosts. We have broken with God. We have ceased to obey Him or love Him
and in guilt and fear have fled as far as possible from His Presence.
Yet who can flee from His Presence when the heaven and the heaven of
heavens cannot contain Him? when as the wisdom of Solomon testifies,
"the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world?" The omnipresence of the Lord
is one thing, and is a solemn fact necessary to His perfection; the
_manifest_ Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presence
we have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or like
Peter to shrink away crying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord."
So the life of man upon the earth is a life away from the Presence,
wrenched loose from that "blissful center" which is our right and proper
dwelling place, our first estate which we kept not, the loss of which is
the cause of our unceasing restlessness.
The whole work of God in redemption is to undo the tragic effects of
that foul revolt, and to bring us back again into right and eternal
relationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed of
satisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the way
opened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and to
live again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient working
within us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when our
restless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we say
within ourselves, "I will arise and go to my Father." That is the first
step, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, "The journey of a
thousand miles begins with a first step."
The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyed
Presence of God is beautifully illustrated in the Old Testament
tabernacle. The returning sinner first entered the outer court where he
offered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in the
laver that stood near it. Then through a veil he passed into the holy
place where no natural light could come, but the golden candlestick
which spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow over
all. There also was the shewbread to tell of Jesus, the Bread of Life,
and the altar of incense, a figure of unceasing prayer.
Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much, still he had not yet entered
the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies
where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and
glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest
could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered
for his sins and the sins of the people. It was this last veil which was
rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writer
explains that this rending of the veil opened the way for every
worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into
the divine Presence.
Everything in the New Testament accords with this Old Testament picture.
Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies.
_God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole
life there._ This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is
more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment
of every day.
This Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order.
Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle were characters of
some unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or for us. The
greatest fact of the tabernacle was that _Jehovah was there_; a Presence
was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the
central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is
God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious
awareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens now
to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress
the Christian's privilege of present realization. According to its
teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is
said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge
that drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the present
generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble
contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in
our _judicial_ possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves
very little about the absence of personal experience.
Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is
none other than God Himself, "One God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible," and "One
Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father
before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God;
begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father," and "the
Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father
and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified." Yet this holy Trinity is One God, for "we worship one God in
Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor
dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another
of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal
and the majesty co-eternal." So in part run the ancient creeds, and so
the inspired Word declares.
Behind the veil is God, that God after Whom the world, with strange
inconsistency, has felt, "if haply they might find Him." He has
discovered Himself to some extent in nature, but more perfectly in the
Incarnation; now He waits to show Himself in ravishing fulness to the
humble of soul and the pure in heart.
The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church
is famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of our
religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience,
to become suddenly aware that we are in God and that God is in us. This
would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be
enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs
and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush.
What a broad world to roam in, what a sea to swim in is this God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is _eternal_, which means that He
antedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him and
will end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers no
change. He is _immutable_, which means that He has never changed and can
never change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go from
better to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for being
perfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become less
perfect He would be less than God. He is _omniscient_, which means that
He knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, all
relationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He _is_,
and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures can
apply to Him. _Love_ and _mercy_ and _righteousness_ are His, and
_holiness_ so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail to
express it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fire
He appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt through
all the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wings
of the cherubim in the holy place was called the "shekinah," the
Presence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old had
given place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and rested
upon each disciple.
Spinoza wrote of the intellectual love of God, and he had a measure of
truth there; but the highest love of God is not intellectual, it is
spiritual. God is spirit and only the spirit of man can know Him really.
In the deep spirit of a man the fire must glow or his love is not the
true love of God. The great of the Kingdom have been those who loved God
more than others did. We all know who they have been and gladly pay
tribute to the depths and sincerity of their devotion. We have but to
pause for a moment and their names come trooping past us smelling of
myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces.
Frederick Faber was one whose soul panted after God as the roe pants
after the water brook, and the measure in which God revealed Himself to
his seeking heart set the good man's whole life afire with a burning
adoration rivaling that of the seraphim before the throne. His love for
God extended to the three Persons of the Godhead equally, yet he seemed
to feel for each One a special kind of love reserved for Him alone. Of
God the Father he sings:
Only to sit and think of God,
Oh what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the Name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love's reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
His love for the Person of Christ was so intense that it threatened to
consume him; it burned within him as a sweet and holy madness and flowed
from his lips like molten gold. In one of his sermons he says, "Wherever
we turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning,
middle and end of everything to us.... There is nothing good, nothing
holy, nothing beautiful, nothing joyous which He is not to His servants.
No one need be poor, because, if he chooses, he can have Jesus for his
own property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is the
joy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We can
exaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligation
to Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. All
our lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come to
an end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will not
be long enough to learn all He is, or to praise Him for all He has done,
but then, that matters not; for we shall be always with Him, and we
desire nothing more." And addressing our Lord directly he says to Him:
I love Thee so, I know not how
My transports to control;
Thy love is like a burning fire
Within my very soul.
Faber's blazing love extended also to the Holy Spirit. Not only in his
theology did he acknowledge His deity and full equality with the Father
and the Son, but he celebrated it constantly in his songs and in his
prayers. He literally pressed his forehead to the ground in his eager
fervid worship of the Third Person of the Godhead. In one of his great
hymns to the Holy Spirit he sums up his burning devotion thus:
O Spirit, beautiful and dread!
My heart is fit to break
With love of all Thy tenderness
For us poor sinners' sake.
I have risked the tedium of quotation that I might show by pointed
example what I have set out to say, viz., that God is so vastly
wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without
anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of
our total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. Such worship as
Faber knew (and he is but one of a great company which no man can
number) can never come from a mere doctrinal knowledge of God. Hearts
that are "fit to break" with love for the Godhead are those who have
been in the Presence and have looked with opened eye upon the majesty
of Deity. Men of the breaking hearts had a quality about them not known
to or understood by common men. They habitually spoke with spiritual
authority. They had been in the Presence of God and they reported what
they saw there. They were prophets, not scribes, for the scribe tells us
what he has read, and the prophet tells what he has seen.