definite declaration, 'I love Thee, O Lord, and I will serve Thee; and
here and now I bind myself in an everlasting covenant to serve Thee for
ever'.
2. Then, again, a true covenant is _a deed which commits you to active
and definite service_. Some covenant-makings are largely sentimental; a
kind of religious IOU or promise to pay, and I fear some are treated as
the Irishman treated his responsibility when, having signed a
promissory note for a debt, he exclaimed, 'Thank God, that is done
with!'
The vows and covenant-making which God wants are those which will be
followed by something practical. The states of emotion and high
spiritual contemplation are right in so far as they assist men to
realize the presence of God and Divine things; but to answer their
purpose they must carry men out to activity and self-denying service
for God and those around them. The highest type of religion is a
combination of the experimental and the practical, the inward and the
outward, the personal and the relative. Our consecration must include
what God can get out of us as well as what we obtain from Him.
I found a parable the other day in a legend of the Greek Church which
is worth repeating. That Church has two favourite saints--St.
Cassianus, the type of monastic asceticism, and St. Nicholas, the type
of genial, active, unselfish, laborious Christianity. St. Cassianus
enters Heaven, and Christ says to him, 'What hast thou seen on earth,
Cassianus?' 'I saw', he answered, 'a peasant floundering with his wagon
in a marsh'. 'Didst thou help him?' 'No.' 'Why not?' 'I was coming
before Thee,' said St. Cassianus, 'and I was afraid of soiling my white
robes'.
Just then St. Nicholas enters Heaven, all covered with mud and mire.
'Why so stained and soiled, St. Nicholas?' said the Lord. 'I saw a
peasant floundering in a marsh,' said St. Nicholas, 'and I put my
shoulder to the wheel, and helped him out'. 'Blessed art thou',
answered the Lord. 'Thou didst well; thou didst better than Cassianus.'
And He blessed St. Nicholas with fourfold approval. The moral is so
obvious that I need not labour the application of my parable.
3. Let me also impress upon you that _covenant-making must be a
believing act_. That is to say, when you come up to the altar of
consecration, and say, 'Here I give my all to Thee', you must believe
that if you are good for your word the Lord is also good for His. So
that what you give, God accepts; what you claim, God gives. That may
appear a very simple way of putting the faith that saves and
sanctifies, but in all its simplicity it is true, for 'He is faithful
who hath promised'.
4. Then comes the all-important _necessity of standing to your
consecration at all costs_. 'Let us join ourselves to the Lord in a
perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.' God wants men and
women who stand to their covenant; who, having made their pledges and
promises, are not turned aside by difficulties or temptations, but say
and mean, as we sing sometimes--
_High Heaven, that heard the solemn vow,
That vow renewed shall daily hear,
Till in life's latest hour I bow,
And bless in death a bond so dear._
In the Book of Judges there is the story of a man named Jephthah. He
made a vow, and when the test came he found it involved the sacrifice
of one who was all the world to him--his daughter, and she was his only
child. Jephthah rent his clothes, and almost broke his heart; and, no
doubt, everybody expected him to set aside his vow; but, no, he stood
to it, declaring, 'I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot
go back'. There are some, thank God, who equally stand to their
covenants with Him; but, alas! that so many open their mouths, and sing
and say words of consecration, but when the temptation comes they do
not stand to their vows.
Of all the people who hinder the cause of Jesus Christ, I think the
most lamentable cases are those who go back upon their Lord. Having
spoken, they do not fulfil their word; having vowed, they do not
perform their vows. They lack that decision which can be expressed in
the words, 'I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of His
people', and I want to urge all such to join with those of us who,
bowing before the Divine altar, renew our covenant, resolving by His
grace to bind ourselves in perpetual devotion and service.
_Take my poor heart, and let it be
For ever closed to all but Thee;
Seal Thou my breast, and I shall wear
The pledge of love for ever there._
XIII
The Baptism of the Spirit
'_And suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty
wind.... And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost._' (Acts ii.
2, 4.)
The Holy Ghost is the active force in all spiritual life. It is,
therefore, important that we should realize the close connexion between
the experience of Holiness and that 'Promise of the Father' for which
the early disciples were to wait. All followers of Jesus should
realize, as truly as the disciples did on that historic day, that their
day of Pentecost has fully come, and each of us should be able to say,
'Not only was the Holy Ghost outpoured upon the waiting host in that
Jewish centre, but Pentecost has come to my heart. The Spirit of the
living God has come to me.'
Now, whatever manifestations of the Holy Ghost there might have been in
Old Testament times--and without question there were some wonderful
displays--the age in which we live is the dispensation of the Holy
Ghost for us. Our Lord said that He should come to convince the world
of sin, and to produce many other mighty effects.
To my mind, that Pentecostal event was like the launching of God's
great campaign for the evangelization of the world. The world without
the Holy Ghost would be as dark, spiritually, as the material world was
in the beginning before the Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,
and God said, 'Let there be light'.
Going over Peter's sermon on that occasion, we find him quoting Joel's
very wonderful prophecy, claiming its fulfilment that day. And amongst
all the glorious truths that have been proclaimed in our own time,
there is none grander than that God will dwell with men--yea, the
Spirit of God will dwell _in_ men.
You cannot read your Bibles, nor look through the books of human
experience, without seeing that God's great purpose in the outpouring
of the Spirit was the setting up of His Kingdom upon the earth. And we
see that as the Son of God humbled Himself to earth's poverty,
ignominy, and death, to redeem men, so the Holy Ghost is sent to be the
great operating force in leading the world back to God. The hope of the
world is in the presence of the Holy Ghost through Jesus Christ.
_It is so in relation to the individual soul._ The Holy Ghost stands at
the door of the Kingdom of God, either to bar the entrance or to fit
the soul to enter. You remember the Saviour's words to Nicodemus,
'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the
kingdom of God'. There is, and can be, no entrance without conversion.
'No man', says Paul, 'can call Jesus Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' And
when some would have put outward religion or the profession of it in
the place of this conversion, the deciding point was stated in
unmistakable terms: 'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is
none of His.' The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Life, the Spirit of
Health, the Spirit of Love, the Spirit of Power, and there would be no
hope for the human soul or the individual life apart from His gracious
presence and influence.
This matter cannot be explained in terms of ordinary language, but it
is none the less real and definite in human experience. To Nicodemus,
Jesus said, '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 Spirit, like
the wind, is mysterious in movement, uncontrolled by human restriction,
and yet its influences are all-pervading. The courses of the wind are
to be discerned by the effects; equally so will the Spirit's
operations; mysterious, unfettered, unexplainable these operations may
be, but the effects are discernible in ourselves and others.
Analysing the purpose of God in the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, _we
see its application to ourselves in several ways_.
There is the rectification of our own hearts, the revealing of Divine
things within us, the transforming of our characters. All these are
indications of the Holy Ghost's work in ourselves; and then comes the
power to help and bless and save others, God making us channels of
blessing, and instruments by which His Kingdom can be extended.
In this connexion there are two sayings of Jesus, which, although the
figure is changed, come up together in my mind. The first is in the
story of the woman at the well in Samaria. The Saviour said to her what
is very applicable to you, 'Whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him
shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life'.
Later, on the last day of the feast, Jesus said, 'He that believeth on
Me, out of him shall flow rivers of living water'. Do you see what
those two sayings of Jesus set before us? The one shows how the Baptism
of the Spirit provides the inward spring, the inward supply, bubbling
up within, fresh, clean, sweet, and vitalizing like a 'fountain ever
springing'; the other indicates the outflow, from us to others, of this
spiritual force and blessing.
Now, you want both the inward spring and the outward flow. Some of you
are very desirous about the second provision: 'Out of you shall flow
rivers of living water'. It is good that you have such desires; but
before you can become a channel through which the vital force can flow
for the Salvation of others, you must yourselves be the subject of the
Spirit's operations within you. Not only as the great Revealer must the
Holy Ghost make Divine things real to you, but as a purifying flame He
must change your nature, purging away the natural corruption and
sinfulness of your heart.
An Eastern legend says that an angel once rested by a fair fountain. In
a favoured hour he infused it with a mysterious power, so that if only
some drops of its water were scattered in a barren plain, a fountain of
sweet water would spring up. Any traveller who henceforth came to the
spring might, after refreshing himself, take some portion from it, and
carry with him the secret of unfailing springs, and suffer no fear of
thirst either for himself or those with him.
We are such travellers, and for us the water which Christ gives is
better than that fabled fountain, for he who carries the precious water
may drop it in places where no spiritual water is, and so bring life
and blessing to the multitudes of needy souls. Oh, note the words, 'The
water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing
up', and 'out of him shall flow rivers of living water'. This He spake
of the Spirit which they that believe on Him should afterwards receive.
That is a very blessed promise, 'Ye shall receive power after that the
Holy Ghost is come upon you'; and yet, so far as we understand the
prevailing experience of Christian people, the promises of power are
very feebly realized, and very slowly acted upon. When we see the
manifest lack of the Holy Ghost in the experience, and ask, 'Why is
this?' we know that the cause may lie in certain easily defined facts.
One reason may be the actual _existence of sin in the heart_--some
hidden or secret wrong. There are numbers in whose hearts there is
something wrong. Is it so with you? Is there some inward love of or
desire for evil? Or the world spirit--is that there? Or anything of a
similar character? Now, before the Holy Ghost can flow into you, to say
nothing of Him flowing through and out of you, these wrong things must
be purged away by the cleansing stream; or, to change the figure, the
purifying flame must
_Burn up the dross of base desire,
And make the mountains flow._
Or the hindrance may lie in a _want of surrender and faith_, without
which the Spirit cannot possess and use us. I am not speaking of some
act of surrender or faith only, but also of that condition which must
be maintained. It is just that neglect or withdrawal which disturbs the
touch with God, and so the connexion is broken. You are all familiar
with the electric switch and the light. You know how slight is the
thing which connects or disconnects the current. A child's finger can
touch a button which will turn on enough electricity to blast a rock or
move the machinery of a great factory.
And so I tell you that little things which are held on to against God's
will switch off the Power. That unwillingness in some hearts to follow
the Lord, and do as He commands, will switch it off; that spirit which
chooses to do this, but won't do that; which says, 'I will go here, but
I won't go there', that sort of thing breaks the connexion.
This comes home very close to some of you, for, alas! it is just there
that your power fails. You must ask yourselves what are the hindrances,
if any, in your hearts and lives? Some of you are weak, wavering,
wobbling, and uncertain. If you look closely you will find the secret
of that in your want of surrender and faith. Do not make a mistake; the
inward experience is closely related to the outward service. God's plan
is first to do the cleansing, and then the filling; first the inward
spring, and then the outward flowing river.
One other important thing. If you have not got the Holy Spirit abiding
within you, _no substitute will meet the need_. Many try to make other
things produce the same effects--religious talking, singing, energetic
service, or the memories of spiritual experiences. These are all very
good, but of themselves they will no more meet the necessities of your
hearts and lives than a picture of a fire will warm the man who spreads
out his hands before it. You must have the real thing--the power of the
Holy Ghost.
Now, the Lord is around and among us, saying, 'Receive ye the Holy
Ghost'; and whether you are an enslaved sinner, or a backslider in
heart; or whether it is the assurance of Salvation, cleansing from sin,
or power for service, which you lack, the Holy Ghost will meet your
particular need. Let God work His will in you, and in Jesus Christ's
name I say, 'Receive ye the Holy Ghost'.
_'Tis fire we want, for fire we plead,
Send the fire!
The fire will meet our every need,
Send the fire!
For strength to ever do the right,
For grace to conquer in the fight,
For power to walk the world in white,
Send the fire!_
_To make our weak hearts strong and brave,
Send the fire!
To live a dying world to save,
Send the fire!
Oh, see us on Thy altar lay
Our lives, our all, this very day--
To crown the offering now we pray,
Send the fire!_
XIV
Lost Earnings
'_He that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with
holes._' (Haggai i. 6.)
In our Holiness Meetings we often speak of Full Salvation as a blessing
to be obtained, and also a blessing to be retained; but I want now to
turn the truth the other way round, and speak about 'losing the
blessing'. These words of Haggai about the man who lost his earnings
through a faulty bag will serve me as a text, and are very significant.
As a figure of speech, the words are well understood. From the boy who,
by holding a horse, or running errands, earns threepence, and puts it
into a pocket with a hole at the bottom, to the man or woman who puts
the savings of years into a rotten speculation, all know the literal
meaning of Haggai's text, 'He that earneth wages earneth wages to put
it into a bag with holes'.
The central idea is that something gained by hard effort has been lost,
and that the loss was due to the man's own fault. The man had earned
his wages, and then let what he had won by toil slip through holes in
the bag into which he put it. The possibility of this in relation to
spiritual blessings is a danger we are warned against in God's Word,
and the necessity for guarding against such losses is one of the
important lessons to be learned.
This text reminds me of an incident and parable in the Book of Kings.
During the progress of a battle one of the leaders, having captured a
prisoner, called to a subordinate and placed the captive in his care,
to be kept at the risk of his life. Later, the man had to give an
account, and when admitting the loss of the prisoner he said, 'As thy
servant was busy here and there, he was gone'. Alas! there are many
whose spiritual acquisitions have slipped away like that.
The spiritual application of this thought is brought home to us by a
verse in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'Therefore we ought to give the
more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time
we should let them slip'. If you look in the margin of your Bible, you
will see the words, 'run out as leaking vessels', and in the Revised
Version the words read, 'drift away from them'. You see the idea is,
that unless you are careful you will lose your blessing after having
enjoyed it.
Looking round my audiences I can with fitness use these figures, and
apply the idea to many who, after tears and agonies of heart, secured
the Salvation of their souls, and the heavenly treasure which only the
pardoned sinner knows; but, alas! through the faulty bag, or pocket
with holes, their earnings slipped away, and they are now spiritual
bankrupts, their latter state being worse than the first. Thank God, if
those who have thus lost their Salvation and peace will truly repent
and do their first works, they may again obtain heavenly treasure, and
with it grace and wisdom to prevent the repetition of past follies. Let
others learn and take heed lest they also drift away, as the Apostle
puts it.
My chief purpose, however, relates to those who, though they once _had
the blessing of a clean heart, have lost it_. Their present lack is not
due to their having exhausted their earnings in lawful pursuits, or
because they invested their treasure in sanctified enterprises, but
because they have let the blessing slip; or, turning back to Haggai's
words, they have been as him 'that earneth wages to put it into a bag
with holes'. The experience is a thing of the past. At times they are
tempted to say that they were deluded, and never had the blessing, or
that they were as a man who only dreamed that he had his wages; but
that is not so. The wages were earned, but lost.
So you must not regard your experience as the sensations of a dream.
You had the blessing right enough, and some of you had secured it at no
small sacrifice; but, alas! you let it slip out of your possession, and
you woke up to find it gone.
It is remarkable how many sanctified people have to testify that before
they settled into the regular experience of Full Salvation they lost
the blessing which they had received; in fact, some eminent saints have
recorded repeated experiences of loss before they learned how to carry
themselves and guard against the dangers.
Perhaps here I ought to say definitely, that the Bible does not tell us
of any stage in our heavenward journey at which we can be saved from
the possibility of losing the blessing. This blessed treasure of
perfect purity, peace which passeth all understanding, and joy
unspeakable, is only ours so long as we maintain that entire
consecration and faith which are the conditions on which the blessing
is received. There is no spot where the advice is not necessary--'Keep
thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life'.
Paul put it clearly, 'Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest
he fall', and showed how seriously he regarded the matter when he
declared that he had to keep his body under and in hand, lest after
preaching to others he should himself become a castaway.
I have called to mind two remarkable touches of Bunyan, in his
'Pilgrim's Progress'. The first picture shows us Christian, weary with
climbing the Hill Difficulty, turning aside into a pleasant arbour
where he sat down to rest. For the comfort of his own heart he pulled
out his roll of assurance. He also began to examine with great
satisfaction the coat which had been given to him, and 'after pleasing
himself for a while' he fell into a slumber, and in his sleep let the
roll fall from his hand.
Mercifully, Christian was awakened, and hasted along the road. Later,
he got into great temptation, and, desiring to reassure his own heart,
he put his hand into his bosom to find the roll, 'which was his pass to
the Celestial City'; but, to his horror, it was not there! After great
distress Christian remembered his sleeping in the arbour, and painfully
retraced his steps 'bewailing his sinful sleep in the midst of
difficulty'. He reached the place of his loss, and at last espied the
roll which had slipped out of his hand. He secured it once more, and
after giving thanks for his recovery, the Pilgrim betook himself again
to his journey.
Bunyan's other picture of Vain-hope is even more pathetic. The vision
shows the gate of the Celestial City, and the entrance of Christian and
other pilgrims. But when this man, Vain-hope, came up, he had no roll
or certificate, having lost it, if he ever had it; the poor wretch
passed away to 'a door on the side of the hill', which caused the
dreamer to write, 'Then I saw that there is a way to Hell even from the
very gates of Heaven'.
How true, therefore, it is, that at every stage of the heavenward
journey, one has to guard against the loss of that spiritual treasure
which has been secured at such a cost.
I hope you see clearly that the Divine treasure is all right, and the
possibility of its continued enjoyment is not in question. If lost, the
fault is with the bag or carrier of the bag. But by pointing out some
of the holes in the bag through which certain people have lost their
blessing, we may help them and others.
As one hole through which spiritual loss is sustained, let me first
speak of _ignorance_. I do not say that in an unkind way. By ignorance
I mean _lack of knowledge_. You cannot imagine a man putting his wages
into a faulty pocket if he knew there was a hole there.
There are traps and pitfalls for the newly sanctified. Some know of
them; others do not know, and are unprepared for dangers and the
devices of the Devil, who, if he cannot hinder a man getting the
blessing will scheme to rob him of it. For instance, temptations to
doubt are pressed on a soul just entering the path of Holiness: 'Can it
be?' 'Have I been deceiving myself?' 'I thought I should have such and
such sensations; where are the feelings of ecstasy which I expected?'
The uninstructed soul often confuses feelings with assurance,
particularly if in the moment of deliverance some special wave of
feeling swept over the soul. When this wave subsides the sensations are
different, and the soul is tempted to doubt the reality of the
transaction.
Personally, I am always thankful that both in the matter of conversion
and getting a clean heart, the Lord left me to claim the blessing by
naked faith. I had little or no special feelings; I just had to go on
believing. I stepped out, as upon thin air, and found my feet on the
rock.
For lack of knowledge many souls imagine that Holiness will mean
ecstasy, or that the sanctified soul will not feel temptation; and
Satan feeds the anxious thought until sometimes the hand of faith is
unclasped, and the blessing lost for the time being.
Later on the faithful soul learns to hold on, to resist the enemy's
insidious attacks, and understands the meaning of the lines--
_Quick as the apple of the eye
The first approach of sin to feel_.
Again, _unwatchfulness_ is a hole, a danger against which I warn
you. Recently saved people, and those who have recently found Full
Salvation, are tempted to say, 'Glory to God, now I am all right!'
forgetting that, although on the right road, the journey is before
them, and that the rule of the road is, '_As_ ye received the Lord
Jesus, _so_ walk in Him'. Do not forget the relation between those two
little words 'as' and 'so'.