1. We are ourselves simple Christians, individual souls
struggling for eternal life and liberty, and we must by all means
save ourselves. To this end we must be holy, else we shall at
last experience the awful woe of those who, having preached to
others, are yet themselves castaways.
2. We are leaders upon whom multitudes depend. It is a joy and an
honour to be a leader, but it is also a grave responsibility.
James says: "We shall receive the heavier judgment" (James iii.
i, R.V.). How unspeakable shall be our blessedness, and how vast
our reward, if, wise in the doctrine, and rich and strong and
clean in the experience of holiness, we lead our people into
their full heritage in Jesus! But how terrible shall be our
condemnation, and how great our loss, if, in spiritual slothfulness
and unbelief, we stop short of the experience ourselves and leave
them to perish for want of the gushing waters and heavenly food
and Divine direction we should have brought them! We need the
experience for ourselves, and we need it for our work and for our
people.
What the roof is to a house, that the doctrine is to our system
of truth. It completes it. What sound and robust health is to our
bodies, that the experience is to our souls. It makes us every
whit whole, and fits us for all duty. Sweep away the doctrine,
and the experience will soon be lost. Lose the experience, and
the doctrine will surely be neglected, if not attacked and
denied. No man can have the heart, even if he has the head, to
fully and faithfully and constantly preach the doctrine unless he
has the experience.
Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and as this doctrine
deals with the deepest things of the Spirit, it is only clearly
understood and is best recommended, explained, defended, and
enforced by those who have the experience.
Without the experience, the presentation of the doctrine will be
faulty and cold and lifeless, or weak and vacillating, or harsh
and sharp and severe. With the experience, the preaching of the
doctrine will be with great joy and assurance, and will be strong
and searching, but at the same time warm and persuasive and
tender.
I shall never forget the shock of mingled surprise and amusement
and grief with which I heard a Captain loudly announce in one of
my meetings many years ago that he was "going to preach holiness
now," and his people "have to get it," if he had to "ram it down
their throats." Poor fellow! He did not possess the experience
himself, and never pressed into it and soon forsook his people.
A man in the clear experience of the blessing will never think of
"ramming" it down people; but will, with much secret prayer,
constant meditation and study, patient instruction, faithful
warning, loving persuasion, and burning, joyful testimony, seek
to lead them into that entire and glad consecration and that
fullness of faith that never fail to receive the blessing.
Again, the most accurate and complete knowledge of the doctrine,
and the fullest possession of the experience, will fail us at
last unless we carefully guard ourselves at several points, and
unless we watch and pray.
3. We must not judge ourselves so much by our feelings as by our
volitions. It is not my feelings, but the purpose of my heart,
the attitude of my will, that God looks at, and it is that to
which I must look. "If our heart condemns us not, then have we
confidence toward God." A friend of mine who had firmly grasped
this thought, and walked continually with God, used to testify:
"I am just as good when I don't feel good as when I do feel
good." Another mighty man of God said that all the feeling he
needed to enable him to trust God was the consciousness that he
was fully submitted to all the known will of God.
We must not forget that the Devil is "the accuser of the
brethren" (Rev. xii. 10), and that he seeks to turn our eyes away
from Jesus, who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our
feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in
this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within
us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the
conies, and build our nest in the cleft of the Rock of Ages.
Hallelujah!
4. We must not divorce conduct from character, or works from
faith. Our lives must square with our teaching. We must live what
we preach. We must not suppose that faith in Jesus excuses us
from patient, faithful, laborious service. We must "live by every
word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; that is, we must
fashion our lives, our conduct, our conversation by the
principles laid down in His word, remembering His searching
saying, "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall
enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of
My Father which is in Heaven."
This subject of faith and works is very fully discussed by James
(chap. ii. 14-26), and Paul is very clear in his teaching that,
while God saves us not by our works, but by His mercy through
faith, yet it is that we may "maintain good work" (Titus iii.
14); and "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto
good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in
them" (Eph. ii. 8-10).
Faith must "work by love," and emotion must be transmitted into
action, and joy must lead to work, and love to faithful,
self-sacrificing service, else they become a kind of pleasant and
respectable, but none the less deadly, debauchery, and at last
ruin us.
5. However blessed and satisfactory our present experience may
be, we must not rest in it, but remember that our Lord has yet
many things to say unto us, as we are able to receive them. We
must stir up the gift of God that is in us, and say with Paul,
"One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and
stretching forward" (as a racer) "to the things which are before,
I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. iii. 13, 14, R.V.). It is at this
point that many fail. They seek the Lord, they weep and struggle
and pray, and then they believe; but, instead of pressing on,
they sit down to enjoy the blessing, and, lo! it is not. The
children of Israel must needs follow the pillar of cloud and
fire. It made no difference when it moved--by day or by night,
they followed; and when the Comforter comes we must follow, if we
would abide in Him and be filled with all the fullness of God.
And, Oh, the joy of following Him!
Finally, if we have the blessing--not the harsh, narrow,
unprogressive exclusiveness which often calls itself by the
sweet, heavenly term of holiness, but the vigorous, courageous,
self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect
love--we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our
converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will
multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our
people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it
was said, "Each one resembled the children of a king."
"HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED?"