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 afterGod, eager to grasp at least the outskirts of His ways, the abyss of Hislove for sinners, and the height of His unapproachable majesty--and itwas written by a busy pastor in Chicago!

Who could imagine David writing the twenty-third Psalm on South HalstedStreet, or a medieval mystic finding inspiration in a small study on thesecond floor of a frame house on that vast, flat checker-board ofendless 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 immortalpoem, 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 lovingfellowship in his church. There I discovered a self-made scholar, anomnivorous reader with a remarkable library of theological anddevotional books, and one who seemed to burn the midnight oil in pursuitof God. His book is the result of long meditation and much prayer. It isnot a collection of sermons. It does not deal with the pulpit and thepew but with the soul athirst for God. The chapters could be summarizedin Moses' prayer, "Show me thy glory, " or Paul's exclamation, "O thedepth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" It istheology not of the head but of the heart. 

There is deep insight, sobriety of style, and a catholicity of outlookthat is refreshing. The author has few quotations but he knows thesaints and mystics of the centuries--Augustine, Nicholas of Cusa, Thomasà Kempis, von Hügel, Finney, Wesley and many more. The ten chapters areheart searching and the prayers at the close of each are for closet, notpulpit. _I felt the nearness of God while reading them. _

Here is a book for every pastor, missionary, and devout Christian. Itdeals with the deep things of God and the riches of His grace. Aboveall, 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 foundincreasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by agrowing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realitiesand will not be put off with words, nor will they be content withcorrect "interpretations" of truth. They are athirst for God, and theywill not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain ofLiving Water. 

This is the only real harbinger of revival which I have been able todetect anywhere on the religious horizon. It may be the cloud the sizeof 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 recaptureof that radiant wonder which should accompany faith in Christ, thatwonder which has all but fled the Church of God in our day. 

But this hunger must be recognized by our religious leaders. Currentevangelicalism has (to change the figure) laid the altar and divided thesacrifice into parts, but now seems satisfied to count the stones andrearrange the pieces with never a care that there is not a sign of fireupon the top of lofty Carmel. But God be thanked that there are a fewwho care. They are those who, while they love the altar and delight inthe sacrifice, are yet unable to reconcile themselves to the continuedabsence of fire. They desire God above all. They are athirst to tastefor themselves the "piercing sweetness" of the love of Christ about Whomall the holy prophets did write and the psalmists did sing. 

There is today no lack of Bible teachers to set forth correctly theprinciples of the doctrines of Christ, but too many of these seemsatisfied 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 constantlyto believers who feel within their breasts a longing which theirteaching 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 tohis: "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 starvingwhile actually seated at the Father's table. The truth of Wesley's wordsis established before our eyes: "Orthodoxy, or right opinion, is, atbest, a very slender part of religion. Though right tempers cannotsubsist without right opinions, yet right opinions may subsist withoutright tempers. There may be a right opinion of God without either loveor one right temper toward Him. Satan is a proof of this. "

Thanks to our splendid Bible societies and to other effective agenciesfor the dissemination of the Word, there are today many millions ofpeople who hold "right opinions, " probably more than ever before in thehistory of the Church. Yet I wonder if there was ever a time when truespiritual worship was at a lower ebb. To great sections of the Churchthe art of worship has been lost entirely, and in its place has comethat strange and foreign thing called the "program. " This word has beenborrowed from the stage and applied with sad wisdom to the type ofpublic service which now passes for worship among us. 

Sound Bible exposition is an imperative _must_ in the Church of theLiving God. Without it no church can be a New Testament church in anystrict meaning of that term. But exposition may be carried on in suchway as to leave the hearers devoid of any true spiritual nourishmentwhatever. For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but GodHimself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personalexperience they are not the better for having heard the truth. The Bibleis not an end in itself, but a means to bring men to an intimate andsatisfying knowledge of God, that they may enter into Him, that they maydelight in His Presence, may taste and know the inner sweetness of thevery God Himself in the core and center of their hearts. 

This book is a modest attempt to aid God's hungry children so to findHim. Nothing here is new except in the sense that it is a discoverywhich my own heart has made of spiritual realities most delightful andwonderful to me. Others before me have gone much farther into these holymysteries 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, whichbriefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God mustfirst have sought the man. 

Before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must havebeen a work of enlightenment done within him; imperfect it may be, but atrue work nonetheless, and the secret cause of all desiring and seekingand praying which may follow. 

We pursue God because, and only because, He has first put an urge withinus 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 veryprevenient _drawing_ that God takes from us every vestige of credit forthe act of coming. The impulse to pursue God originates with God, butthe outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him; and allthe time we are pursuing Him we are already in His hand: "Thy right handupholdeth me. "

In this divine "upholding" and human "following" there is nocontradiction. All is of God, for as von Hügel teaches, _God is alwaysprevious_. In practice, however, (that is, where God's previous workingmeets man's present response) man must pursue God. On our part theremust be positive reciprocation if this secret drawing of God is toeventuate in identifiable experience of the Divine. In the warm languageof personal feeling this is stated in the Forty-second Psalm: "As thehart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, OGod. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I comeand appear before God?" This is deep calling unto deep, and the longingheart will understand it. 

The doctrine of justification by faith--a Biblical truth, and a blessedrelief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort--has in our timefallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner asactually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction ofreligious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith maynow be exercised without a jar to the moral life and withoutembarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be "received" withoutcreating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver. The manis "saved, " but he is not hungry nor thirsty after God. In fact he isspecifically taught to be satisfied and encouraged to be content withlittle. 

The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world; weChristians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of HisWord. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can becultivated as any person can. It is inherent in personality to be ableto know other personalities, but full knowledge of one personality byanother cannot be achieved in one encounter. It is only after long andloving mental intercourse that the full possibilities of both can beexplored. 

All social intercourse between human beings is a response of personalityto personality, grading upward from the most casual brush between manand man to the fullest, most intimate communion of which the human soulis capable. Religion, so far as it is genuine, is in essence theresponse of created personalities to the Creating Personality, God. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, andJesus 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. Inmaking Himself known to us He stays by the familiar pattern ofpersonality. He communicates with us through the avenues of our minds, our wills and our emotions. The continuous and unembarrassedinterchange of love and thought between God and the soul of the redeemedman is the throbbing heart of New Testament religion. 

This intercourse between God and the soul is known to us in consciouspersonal awareness. It is personal: that is, it does not come throughthe body of believers, as such, but is known to the individual, and tothe body through the individuals which compose it. And it is conscious:that is, it does not stay below the threshold of consciousness and workthere unknown to the soul (as, for instance, infant baptism is thoughtby some to do), but comes within the field of awareness where the mancan "know" it as he knows any other fact of experience. 

You and I are in little (our sins excepted) what God is in large. Beingmade in His image we have within us the capacity to know Him. In oursins we lack only the power. The moment the Spirit has quickened us tolife in regeneration our whole being senses its kinship to God and leapsup in joyous recognition. That is the heavenly birth without which wecannot see the Kingdom of God. It is, however, not an end but aninception, for now begins the glorious pursuit, the heart's happyexploration of the infinite riches of the Godhead. That is where webegin, I say, but where we stop no man has yet discovered, for there isin the awful and mysterious depths of the Triune God neither limit norend. 

 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 inhappy experience by the children of the burning heart. St. Bernardstated this holy paradox in a musical quatrain that will be instantlyunderstood 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 feelthe heat of their desire after God. They mourned for Him, they prayedand wrestled and sought for Him day and night, in season and out, andwhen they had found Him the finding was all the sweeter for the longseeking. Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowingHim better. "Now, therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thysight, show me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find gracein thy sight"; and from there he rose to make the daring request, "Ibeseech thee, show me thy glory. " God was frankly pleased by thisdisplay of ardor, and the next day called Moses into the mount, andthere in solemn procession made all His glory pass before him. 

David's life was a torrent of spiritual desire, and his psalms ring withthe cry of the seeker and the glad shout of the finder. Paul confessedthe mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after Christ. "ThatI may know Him, " was the goal of his heart, and to this he sacrificedeverything. "Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for theexcellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I havesuffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse, that Imay win Christ. "

Hymnody is sweet with the longing after God, the God whom, while thesinger seeks, he knows he has already found. "His track I see and I'llpursue, " sang our fathers only a short generation ago, but that song isheard no more in the great congregation. How tragic that we in this darkday have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is madeto center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expectedthereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We havebeen snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if wehave found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as thelast word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taughtChristian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of theworshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply setaside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrantsaints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture whichwould certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or aBrainerd. 

In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice toacknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will admitthe force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt somelonely 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 thatis God. 

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lackof it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and woodenquality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holydesire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acutedesire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ toHis people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waitsso long, so very long, in vain. 

Every age has its own characteristics. Right now we are in an age ofreligious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely foundamong us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations and a worldof nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can neversatisfy the longing of the heart. The shallowness of our innerexperience, the hollowness of our worship, and that servile imitation ofthe world which marks our promotional methods all testify that we, inthis day, know God only imperfectly, and the peace of God scarcely atall. 

If we would find God amid all the religious externals we must firstdetermine to find Him, and then proceed in the way of simplicity. Now asalways God discovers Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thickdarkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach toHim. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to beblessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come withthe guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God willquickly respond. 

When religion has said its last word, there is little that we need otherthan God Himself. The evil habit of seeking _God-and_ effectivelyprevents us from finding God in full revelation. In the "and" lies ourgreat woe. If we omit the "and" we shall soon find God, and in Him weshall 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 orrestrict the motions of our expanding hearts. The opposite is true. Wecan well afford to make God our All, to concentrate, to sacrifice themany 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 meekstirring 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 workin thy wit, nor in thy will, but only God Himself. This is the work ofthe soul that most pleaseth God. "

Again, he recommends that in prayer we practice a further stripping downof everything, even of our theology. "For it sufficeth enough, a nakedintent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself. " Yetunderneath all his thinking lay the broad foundation of New Testamenttruth, for he explains that by "Himself" he means "God that made thee, and bought thee, and that graciously called thee to thy degree. " And heis all for simplicity: If we would have religion "lapped and folden inone word, for that thou shouldst have better hold thereupon, take theebut a little word of one syllable: for so it is better than of two, foreven the shorter it is the better it accordeth with the work of theSpirit. And such a word is this word GOD or this word LOVE. "

When the Lord divided Canaan among the tribes of Israel Levi received noshare of the land. God said to him simply, "I am thy part and thineinheritance, " 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 forevery priest of the Most High God. 

The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Manyordinary 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 benecessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, hewill scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all thingshe has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight. Whatever hemay lose he has actually lost nothing, for he now has it all in One, andhe has it purely, legitimately and forever. 

_O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me andmade me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need of furthergrace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I wantto want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made morethirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, that so I may know Theeindeed. 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 torise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered solong. 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 bycreating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance anddelight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply"things. " They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always tobe external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of theman was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him wasGod; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him. 

But sin has introduced complications and has made those very gifts ofGod 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" havetaken over. Men have now by nature no peace within their hearts, for Godis crowned there no longer, but there in the moral dusk stubborn andaggressive usurpers fight among themselves for first place on thethrone. 

This is not a mere metaphor, but an accurate analysis of our realspiritual trouble. There is within the human heart a tough fibrous rootof 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 issignificant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man betterthan a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptomsof 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 havebecome necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God'sgifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upsetby the monstrous substitution. 

Our Lord referred to this tyranny of _things_ when He said to Hisdisciples, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, andtake up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shalllose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it. "

Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, itwould seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate atour 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 theend to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ'ssake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto lifeeternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effectiveway to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his crossand follow me. "

The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soulpoverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess theKingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and haverooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. These are the "poor inspirit. " They have reached an inward state paralleling the outwardcircumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that iswhat the word "poor" as Christ used it actually means. These blessedpoor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of _things_. They have brokenthe yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting butby surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yetpossess all things. "Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "

Let me exhort you to take this seriously. It is not to be understood asmere Bible teaching to be stored away in the mind along with an inertmass 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 nottry to by-pass it if we would follow on in this holy pursuit. We mustascend a step at a time. If we refuse one step we bring our progress toan end. 

As is frequently true, this New Testament principle of spiritual lifefinds its best illustration in the Old Testament. In the story ofAbraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life aswell as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude. 

Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been hisgrandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of hisheart. From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny formawkwardly in his arms he was an eager love slave of his son. God wentout of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it isnot hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to hisfather's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of theyears and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhoodto young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closerwith the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered uponthe perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father andson from the consequences of an uncleansed love. 

"Take now thy son, " said God to Abraham, "thine only son Isaac, whomthou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him therefor a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell theeof. " The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night onthe slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, butrespectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsivewrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater thanAbraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visita 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 todie would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long withGod. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let hisdimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would liveto carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises ofGod made long before in Ur of the Chaldees. 

How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of hiswounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with thepromise, "In Isaac shall thy seed be called"? This was Abraham's trialby fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars stillshone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaaclay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, theold saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God haddirected 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 heartfound sometime in the dark night, and he rose "early in the morning" tocarry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as toGod's method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. Andthe solution accords well with the New Testament Scripture, "Whosoeverwill lose for my sake shall find. "

God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point whereHe knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a handupon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, "It'sall right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay thelad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that Imight reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion thatexisted in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take himand go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thatthou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me. "

Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, "By myself haveI sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hastnot withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will blessthee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of theheaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shallpossess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nationsof the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. "

The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stoodthere on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by theLord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most High. Nowhe was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man whopossessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dearson, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on themargin of Abraham's life and worked inward to the center; He choserather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act ofseparation. 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 manrich? Everything he had owned before was his still to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and hisfriends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He hadeverything, but _he possessed nothing_. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only inthe school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlookthis, 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 ofpossession which they connote was gone from his heart. _Things_ had beencast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His innerheart was free from them. The world said, "Abraham is rich, " but theaged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knewthat he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal. 

There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one ofthe most harmful habits in the life. Because it is so natural it israrely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings aretragic. 

We are often hindered from giving up our treasures to the Lord out offear for their safety; this is especially true when those treasures areloved relatives and friends. But we need have no such fears. Our Lordcame not to destroy but to save. Everything is safe which we commit toHim, and nothing is really safe which is not so committed. 

Our gifts and talents should also be turned over to Him. They should berecognized for what they are, God's loan to us, and should never beconsidered in any sense our own. We have no more right to claim creditfor special abilities than for blue eyes or strong muscles. "For whomaketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didstnot receive?"

The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly willrecognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve tofind them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enoughwithin him he will want to do something about the matter. Now, whatshould he do?

First of all he should put away all defense and make no attempt toexcuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoeverdefends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have noother; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have forhis defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christiantrample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart andinsist upon frank and open relations with the Lord. 

Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless orcasual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in full determinationto 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 hewill need to become specific, to name things and people by their namesone by one. If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time ofhis travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long beforehis slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution intheir dealings with God. 

Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by roteas one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be_experienced_ before we can really know them. We must in our hearts livethrough Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know theblessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go outpainlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and dieobedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plantfrom the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth fromthe jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christexpelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steelourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springingout 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 ofrenunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooneror later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing was, at the time, notknown to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the onehe did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have beendifferent. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss toAbraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be broughtone by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we arethere. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choicesfor us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will beconditioned by the choice we make. 

_Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up itstoys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not tryto hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I docome. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherishedso long and which have become a very part of my living self, so thatThou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou makethe place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of thesun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shallbe 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 thanAugustine's, "Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts arerestless till they find rest in Thee. "

The great saint states here in few words the origin and interior historyof the human race. God made us for Himself: that is the only explanationthat satisfies the _heart_ of a thinking man, whatever his wild reasonmay say. Should faulty education and perverse reasoning lead a man toconclude 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 whohave been previously taught in secret by the wisdom of God; I speak tothirsty hearts whose longings have been wakened by the touch of Godwithin them, and such as they need no reasoned proof. Their restlesshearts furnish all the proof they need. 

God formed us for Himself. The _Shorter Catechism_, "Agreed upon by theReverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster, " as the old _New-EnglandPrimer_ has it, asks the ancient questions _what_ and _why_ and answersthem in one short sentence hardly matched in any uninspired work. "_Question_: What is the chief End of Man? _Answer_: Man's chief End isto glorify God and enjoy Him forever. " With this agree the four andtwenty elders who fall on their faces to worship Him that liveth forever and ever, saying, "Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory andhonour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasurethey are and were created. "

God formed us for His pleasure, and so formed us that we as well as Hecan in divine communion enjoy the sweet and mysterious mingling ofkindred personalities. He meant us to see Him and live with Him and drawour life from His smile. But we have been guilty of that "foul revolt"of which Milton speaks when describing the rebellion of Satan and hishosts. We have broken with God. We have ceased to obey Him or love Himand 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 ofheavens cannot contain Him? when as the wisdom of Solomon testifies, "the Spirit of the Lord filleth the world?" The omnipresence of the Lordis one thing, and is a solemn fact necessary to His perfection; the_manifest_ Presence is another thing altogether, and from that Presencewe have fled, like Adam, to hide among the trees of the garden, or likePeter to shrink away crying, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, OLord. "

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 properdwelling place, our first estate which we kept not, the loss of which isthe cause of our unceasing restlessness. 

The whole work of God in redemption is to undo the tragic effects ofthat foul revolt, and to bring us back again into right and eternalrelationship with Himself. This required that our sins be disposed ofsatisfactorily, that a full reconciliation be effected and the wayopened for us to return again into conscious communion with God and tolive again in the Presence as before. Then by His prevenient workingwithin us He moves us to return. This first comes to our notice when ourrestless hearts feel a yearning for the Presence of God and we saywithin ourselves, "I will arise and go to my Father. " That is the firststep, and as the Chinese sage Lao-tze has said, "The journey of athousand miles begins with a first step. "

The interior journey of the soul from the wilds of sin into the enjoyedPresence of God is beautifully illustrated in the Old Testamenttabernacle. The returning sinner first entered the outer court where heoffered a blood sacrifice on the brazen altar and washed himself in thelaver that stood near it. Then through a veil he passed into the holyplace where no natural light could come, but the golden candlestickwhich spoke of Jesus the Light of the World threw its soft glow overall. 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 enteredthe Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holieswhere above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful andglorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priestcould enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offeredfor his sins and the sins of the people. It was this last veil which wasrent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writerexplains that this rending of the veil opened the way for everyworshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight intothe 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 wholelife there. _ This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It ismore than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every momentof 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 ofsome unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or for us. Thegreatest fact of the tabernacle was that _Jehovah was there_; a Presencewas waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is thecentral fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message isGod Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to consciousawareness of His Presence. That type of Christianity which happens nowto be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stressthe Christian's privilege of present realization. According to itsteachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing issaid about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urgethat drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the presentgeneration of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoblecontentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest inour _judicial_ possessions and for the most part we bother ourselvesvery little about the absence of personal experience. 

Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It isnone other than God Himself, "One God the Father Almighty, Maker ofheaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible, " and "OneLord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Fatherbefore all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God;begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father, " and "theHoly Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Fatherand the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped andglorified. " Yet this holy Trinity is One God, for "we worship one God inTrinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nordividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, anotherof the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of theFather, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equaland the majesty co-eternal. " So in part run the ancient creeds, and sothe inspired Word declares. 

Behind the veil is God, that God after Whom the world, with strangeinconsistency, has felt, "if haply they might find Him. " He hasdiscovered Himself to some extent in nature, but more perfectly in theIncarnation; now He waits to show Himself in ravishing fulness to thehumble of soul and the pure in heart. 

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Churchis famishing for want of His Presence. The instant cure of most of ourreligious 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. Thiswould lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to beenlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugsand 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 andFather of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is _eternal_, which means that Heantedates time and is wholly independent of it. Time began in Him andwill end in Him. To it He pays no tribute and from it He suffers nochange. He is _immutable_, which means that He has never changed and cannever change in any smallest measure. To change He would need to go frombetter to worse or from worse to better. He cannot do either, for beingperfect He cannot become more perfect, and if He were to become lessperfect He would be less than God. He is _omniscient_, which means thatHe knows in one free and effortless act all matter, all spirit, allrelationships, all events. He has no past and He has no future. He _is_, and none of the limiting and qualifying terms used of creatures canapply to Him. _Love_ and _mercy_ and _righteousness_ are His, and_holiness_ so ineffable that no comparisons or figures will avail toexpress it. Only fire can give even a remote conception of it. In fireHe appeared at the burning bush; in the pillar of fire He dwelt throughall the long wilderness journey. The fire that glowed between the wingsof the cherubim in the holy place was called the "shekinah, " thePresence, through the years of Israel's glory, and when the Old hadgiven place to the New, He came at Pentecost as a fiery flame and restedupon each disciple. 

Spinoza wrote of the intellectual love of God, and he had a measure oftruth there; but the highest love of God is not intellectual, it isspiritual. 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 thetrue love of God. The great of the Kingdom have been those who loved Godmore than others did. We all know who they have been and gladly paytribute to the depths and sincerity of their devotion. We have but topause for a moment and their names come trooping past us smelling ofmyrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces. 

Frederick Faber was one whose soul panted after God as the roe pantsafter the water brook, and the measure in which God revealed Himself tohis seeking heart set the good man's whole life afire with a burningadoration rivaling that of the seraphim before the throne. His love forGod extended to the three Persons of the Godhead equally, yet he seemedto feel for each One a special kind of love reserved for Him alone. OfGod 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 toconsume him; it burned within him as a sweet and holy madness and flowedfrom his lips like molten gold. In one of his sermons he says, "Whereverwe turn in the church of God, there is Jesus. He is the beginning, middle and end of everything to us. .. . There is nothing good, nothingholy, 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 hisown property and possession. No one need be downcast, for Jesus is thejoy of heaven, and it is His joy to enter into sorrowful hearts. We canexaggerate about many things; but we can never exaggerate our obligationto Jesus, or the compassionate abundance of the love of Jesus to us. Allour lives long we might talk of Jesus, and yet we should never come toan end of the sweet things that might be said of Him. Eternity will notbe 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 wedesire 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 histheology did he acknowledge His deity and full equality with the Fatherand the Son, but he celebrated it constantly in his songs and in hisprayers. He literally pressed his forehead to the ground in his eagerfervid worship of the Third Person of the Godhead. In one of his greathymns 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 pointedexample what I have set out to say, viz. , that God is so vastlywonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, withoutanything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands ofour total nature, mysterious and deep as that nature is. Such worship asFaber knew (and he is but one of a great company which no man cannumber) can never come from a mere doctrinal knowledge of God. Heartsthat are "fit to break" with love for the Godhead are those who havebeen in the Presence and have looked with opened eye upon the majestyof Deity. Men of the breaking hearts had a quality about them not knownto or understood by common men. They habitually spoke with spiritualauthority. They had been in the Presence of God and they reported whatthey saw there. They were prophets, not scribes, for the scribe tells uswhat he has read, and the prophet tells what he has seen. 

The distinction is not an imaginary one. Between the scribe who has readand the prophet who has seen there is a difference as wide as the sea. We are today overrun with orthodox scribes, but the prophets, where arethey? The hard voice of the scribe sounds over evangelicalism, but theChurch waits for the tender voice of the saint who has penetrated theveil and has gazed with inward eye upon the Wonder that is God. And yet, thus to penetrate, to push in sensitive living experience into the holyPresence, is a privilege open to every child of God. 

With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus' flesh, with nothing onGod's side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why dowe consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies andnever enter at all to look upon God? We hear the Bridegroom say, "Let mesee thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice andthy countenance is comely. " We sense that the call is for us, but stillwe fail to draw near, and the years pass and we grow old and tired inthe outer courts of the tabernacle. What doth hinder us?

The answer usually given, simply that we are "cold, " will not explainall the facts. There is something more serious than coldness of heart, something that may be back of that coldness and be the cause of itsexistence. What is it? What but the presence of _a veil in our hearts_?a veil not taken away as the first veil was, but which remains therestill shutting out the light and hiding the face of God from us. It isthe veil of our fleshly fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close-woven veil of theself-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have beensecretly ashamed, and which for these reasons we have never brought tothe judgment of the cross. It is not too mysterious, this opaque veil, nor is it hard to identify. We have but to look in our own hearts and weshall see it there, sewn and patched and repaired it may be, but therenevertheless, an enemy to our lives and an effective block to ourspiritual progress. 

This veil is not a beautiful thing and it is not a thing about which wecommonly care to talk, but I am addressing the thirsting souls who aredetermined to follow God, and I know they will not turn back because theway leads temporarily through the blackened hills. The urge of Godwithin them will assure their continuing the pursuit. They will face thefacts however unpleasant and endure the cross for the joy set beforethem. So I am bold to name the threads out of which this inner veil iswoven. 

It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins ofthe human spirit. They are not something we do, they are something we_are_, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power. 

To be specific, the self-sins are these: self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a hostof others like them. They dwell too deep within us and are too much apart of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God isfocused upon them. The grosser manifestations of these sins, egotism, exhibitionism, self-promotion, are strangely tolerated in Christianleaders even in circles of impeccable orthodoxy. They are so much inevidence as actually, for many people, to become identified with thegospel. I trust it is not a cynical observation to say that they appearthese days to be a requisite for popularity in some sections of theChurch visible. Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ iscurrently so common as to excite little notice. 

One should suppose that proper instruction in the doctrines of man'sdepravity and the necessity for justification through the righteousnessof Christ alone would deliver us from the power of the self-sins; but itdoes not work out that way. Self can live unrebuked at the very altar. It can watch the bleeding Victim die and not be in the least affected bywhat it sees. It can fight for the faith of the Reformers and preacheloquently the creed of salvation by grace, and gain strength by itsefforts. To tell all the truth, it seems actually to feed upon orthodoxyand is more at home in a Bible Conference than in a tavern. Our verystate of longing after God may afford it an excellent condition underwhich to thrive and grow. 

Self is the opaque veil that hides the Face of God from us. It can beremoved only in spiritual experience, never by mere instruction. As welltry to instruct leprosy out of our system. There must be a work of Godin destruction before we are free. We must invite the cross to do itsdeadly work within us. We must bring our self-sins to the cross forjudgment. We must prepare ourselves for an ordeal of suffering in somemeasure like that through which our Saviour passed when He sufferedunder Pontius Pilate. 

Let us remember: when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speakingin a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant; but inactuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience thatveil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole beings consist, and to touch it is totouch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt usand make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross anddeath no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dearand tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeplypainful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what thecross would do to every man to set him free. 

Let us beware of tinkering with our inner life in hope ourselves to rendthe veil. God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust. We must confess, forsake, repudiate the self-life, and then reckon itcrucified. But we must be careful to distinguish lazy "acceptance" fromthe real work of God. We must insist upon the work being done. We darenot rest content with a neat doctrine of self-crucifixion. That is toimitate Saul and spare the best of the sheep and the oxen. 

Insist that the work be done in very truth and it will be done. Thecross is rough, and it is deadly, but it is effective. It does not keepits victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work isfinished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection gloryand power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken awayand we have entered in actual spiritual experience the Presence of theliving God. 

_Lord, how excellent are Thy ways, and how devious and dark are the waysof man. Show us how to die, that we may rise again to newness of life. Rend the veil of our self-life from the top down as Thou didst rend theveil of the Temple. We would draw near in full assurance of faith. Wewould dwell with Thee in daily experience here on this earth so that wemay be accustomed to the glory when we enter Thy heaven to dwell withThee there. In Jesus' name, Amen. _

IV

_Apprehending God_

 O taste and see. --Psa. 34:8

It was Canon Holmes, of India, who more than twenty-five years agocalled attention to the inferential character of the average man's faithin God. To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is adeduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but He remainspersonally unknown to the individual. "He _must_ be, " they say, "therefore we believe He is. " Others do not go even so far as this; theyknow of Him only by hearsay. They have never bothered to think thematter out for themselves, but have heard about Him from others, andhave put belief in Him into the back of their minds along with thevarious odds and ends that make up their total creed. To many others Godis but an ideal, another name for goodness, or beauty, or truth; or Heis law, or life, or the creative impulse back of the phenomena ofexistence. 

These notions about God are many and varied, but they who hold them haveone thing in common: they do not know God in personal experience. Thepossibility of intimate acquaintance with Him has not entered theirminds. While admitting His existence they do not think of Him asknowable in the sense that we know things or people. 

Christians, to be sure, go further than this, at least in theory. Theircreed requires them to believe in the personality of God, and they havebeen taught to pray, "Our Father, which art in heaven. " Now personalityand fatherhood carry with them the idea of the possibility of personalacquaintance. This is admitted, I say, in theory, but for millions ofChristians, nevertheless, God is no more real than He is to thenon-Christian. They go through life trying to love an ideal and be loyalto a mere principle. 

Over against all this cloudy vagueness stands the clear scripturaldoctrine that God can be known in personal experience. A lovingPersonality dominates the Bible, walking among the trees of the gardenand breathing fragrance over every scene. Always a living Person ispresent, speaking, pleading, loving, working, and manifesting Himselfwhenever and wherever His people have the receptivity necessary toreceive the manifestation. 

The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know God with atleast the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person orthing that comes within the field of their experience. The same termsare used to express the knowledge of God as are used to expressknowledge of physical things. "O _taste_ and see that the Lord is good. ""All thy garments _smell_ of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of theivory palaces. " "My sheep _hear_ my voice. " "Blessed are the pure inheart, for they shall _see_ God. " These are but four of countless suchpassages from the Word of God. And more important than any proof text isthe fact that the whole import of the Scripture is toward this belief. 

What can all this mean except that we have in our hearts organs by meansof which we can know God as certainly as we know material things throughour familiar five senses? We apprehend the physical world by exercisingthe faculties given us for the purpose, and we possess spiritualfaculties by means of which we can know God and the spiritual world ifwe will obey the Spirit's urge and begin to use them. 

That a saving work must first be done in the heart is taken for grantedhere. The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep in hisnature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which hasfallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by theoperation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of theimmeasurable benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work onthe cross. 

But the very ransomed children of God themselves: why do they know solittle of that habitual conscious communion with God which theScriptures seem to offer? The answer is our chronic unbelief. Faithenables our spiritual sense to function. Where faith is defective theresult will be inward insensibility and numbness toward spiritualthings. This is the condition of vast numbers of Christians today. Noproof is necessary to support that statement. We have but to conversewith the first Christian we meet or enter the first church we find opento acquire all the proof we need. 

A spiritual kingdom lies all about us, enclosing us, embracing us, altogether within reach of our inner selves, waiting for us to recognizeit. God Himself is here waiting our response to His Presence. Thiseternal world will come alive to us the moment we begin to reckon uponits reality. 

I have just now used two words which demand definition; or if definitionis impossible, I must at least make clear what I mean when I use them. They are "reckon" and "reality. "

What do I mean by _reality_? I mean that which has existence apart fromany idea any mind may have of it, and which would exist if there were nomind anywhere to entertain a thought of it. That which is real has beingin itself. It does not depend upon the observer for its validity. 

I am aware that there are those who love to poke fun at the plain man'sidea of reality. They are the idealists who spin endless proofs thatnothing is real outside of the mind. They are the relativists who liketo show that there are no fixed points in the universe from which we canmeasure anything. They smile down upon us from their lofty intellectualpeaks and settle us to their own satisfaction by fastening upon us thereproachful term "absolutist. " The Christian is not put out ofcountenance by this show of contempt. He can smile right back at them, for he knows that there is only One who is Absolute, that is God. But heknows also that the Absolute One has made this world for man's uses, and, while there is nothing fixed or real in the last meaning of thewords (the meaning as applied to God) _for every purpose of human lifewe are permitted to act as if there were_. And every man does act thusexcept the mentally sick. These unfortunates also have trouble withreality, but they are consistent; they insist upon living in accordancewith their ideas of things. They are honest, and it is their veryhonesty that constitutes them a social problem. 

The idealists and relativists are not mentally sick. They prove theirsoundness by living their lives according to the very notions of realitywhich they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixedpoints which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot morerespect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; butthis they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, notlife-deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories andlive like other men. 

The Christian is too sincere to play with ideas for their own sake. Hetakes no pleasure in the mere spinning of gossamer webs for display. Allhis beliefs are practical. They are geared into his life. By them helives or dies, stands or falls for this world and for all time to come. From the insincere man he turns away. 

The sincere plain man knows that the world is real. He finds it herewhen he wakes to consciousness, and he knows that he did not think itinto being. It was here waiting for him when he came, and he knows thatwhen he prepares to leave this earthly scene it will be here still tobid him good-bye as he departs. By the deep wisdom of life he is wiserthan a thousand men who doubt. He stands upon the earth and feels thewind and rain in his face and he knows that they are real. He sees thesun by day and the stars by night. He sees the hot lightning play out ofthe dark thundercloud. He hears the sounds of nature and the cries ofhuman joy and pain. These he knows are real. He lies down on the coolearth at night and has no fear that it will prove illusory or fail himwhile he sleeps. In the morning the firm ground will be under him, theblue sky above him and the rocks and trees around him as when he closedhis eyes the night before. So he lives and rejoices in a world ofreality. 

With his five senses he engages this real world. All things necessary tohis physical existence he apprehends by the faculties with which he hasbeen equipped by the God who created him and placed him in such a worldas this. 

Now, by our definition also God is real. He is real in the absolute andfinal sense that nothing else is. All other reality is contingent uponHis. The great Reality is God who is the Author of that lower anddependent reality which makes up the sum of created things, includingourselves. God has objective existence independent of and apart from anynotions which we may have concerning Him. The worshipping heart does notcreate its Object. It finds Him here when it wakes from its moralslumber in the morning of its regeneration. 

Another word that must be cleared up is the word _reckon_. This does notmean to visualize or imagine. Imagination is not faith. The two are notonly different from, but stand in sharp opposition to, each other. Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attachreality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon thatwhich is already _there_. 

God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon them with asmuch assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us. Spiritual things are there (or rather we should say _here_) invitingour attention and challenging our trust. 

Our trouble is that we have established bad thought habits. Wehabitually think of the visible world as real and doubt the reality ofany other. We do not deny the existence of the spiritual world but wedoubt that it is real in the accepted meaning of the word. 

The world of sense intrudes upon our attention day and night for thewhole of our lifetime. It is clamorous, insistent andself-demonstrating. It does not appeal to our faith; it is here, assaulting our five senses, demanding to be accepted as real and final. But sin has so clouded the lenses of our hearts that we cannot see thatother reality, the City of God, shining around us. The world of sensetriumphs. The visible becomes the enemy of the invisible; the temporal, of the eternal. That is the curse inherited by every member of Adam'stragic race. 

At the root of the Christian life lies belief in the invisible. Theobject of the Christian's faith is unseen reality. 

Our uncorrected thinking, influenced by the blindness of our naturalhearts and the intrusive ubiquity of visible things, tends to draw acontrast between the spiritual and the real; but actually no suchcontrast exists. The antithesis lies elsewhere: between the real and theimaginary, between the spiritual and the material, between the temporaland the eternal; but between the spiritual and the real, never. Thespiritual _is_ real. 

If we would rise into that region of light and power plainly beckoningus through the Scriptures of truth we must break the evil habit ofignoring the spiritual. We must shift our interest from the seen to theunseen. For the great unseen Reality is God. "He that cometh to God mustbelieve that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligentlyseek him. " This is basic in the life of faith. From there we can rise tounlimited heights. "Ye believe in God, " said our Lord Jesus Christ, "believe also in me. " Without the first there can be no second. 

If we truly want to follow God we must seek to be other-worldly. This Isay knowing well that that word has been used with scorn by the sons ofthis world and applied to the Christian as a badge of reproach. So beit. Every man must choose his world. If we who follow Christ, with allthe facts before us and knowing what we are about, deliberately choosethe Kingdom of God as our sphere of interest I see no reason why anyoneshould object. If we lose by it, the loss is our own; if we gain, we robno one by so doing. The "other world, " which is the object of thisworld's disdain and the subject of the drunkard's mocking song, is ourcarefully chosen goal and the object of our holiest longing. 

But we must avoid the common fault of pushing the "other world" into thefuture. It is not future, but present. It parallels our familiarphysical world, and the doors between the two worlds are open. "Ye arecome, " says the writer to the Hebrews (and the tense is plainlypresent), "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, theheavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to thegeneral assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written inheaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men madeperfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the bloodof sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. " All thesethings are contrasted with "the mount that might be touched" and "thesound of a trumpet and the voice of words" that might be heard. May wenot safely conclude that, as the realities of Mount Sinai wereapprehended by the senses, so the realities of Mount Zion are to begrasped by the soul? And this not by any trick of the imagination, butin downright actuality. The soul has eyes with which to see and earswith which to hear. Feeble they may be from long disuse, but by thelife-giving touch of Christ alive now and capable of sharpest sight andmost sensitive hearing. 

As we begin to focus upon God the things of the spirit will take shapebefore our inner eyes. Obedience to the word of Christ will bring aninward revelation of the Godhead (John 14:21-23). It will give acuteperception enabling us to see God even as is promised to the pure inheart. A new God consciousness will seize upon us and we shall begin totaste and hear and inwardly feel the God who is our life and our all. There will be seen the constant shining of the light that lighteth everyman that cometh into the world. More and more, as our faculties growsharper and more sure, God will become to us the great All, and HisPresence the glory and wonder of our lives. 

_O God, quicken to life every power within me, that I may lay hold oneternal things. Open my eyes that I may see; give me acute spiritualperception; enable me to taste Thee and know that Thou art good. Makeheaven more real to me than any earthly thing has ever been. Amen. _

V

_The Universal Presence_

 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?--Psa. 139:7

In all Christian teaching certain basic truths are found, hidden attimes, and rather assumed than asserted, but necessary to all truth asthe primary colors are found in and necessary to the finished painting. Such a truth is the divine immanence. 

God dwells in His creation and is everywhere indivisibly present in allHis works. This is boldly taught by prophet and apostle and is acceptedby Christian theology generally. That is, it appears in the books, butfor some reason it has not sunk into the average Christian's heart so asto become a part of his believing self. Christian teachers shy away fromits full implications, and, if they mention it at all, mute it down tillit has little meaning. I would guess the reason for this to be the fearof being charged with pantheism; but the doctrine of the divine Presenceis definitely not pantheism. 

Pantheism's error is too palpable to deceive anyone. It is that God isthe sum of all created things. Nature and God are one, so that whoevertouches a leaf or a stone touches God. That is of course to degrade theglory of the incorruptible Deity and, in an effort to make all thingsdivine, banish all divinity from the world entirely. 

The truth is that while God dwells in His world He is separated from itby a gulf forever impassable. However closely He may be identified withthe work of His hands _they_ are and must eternally be _other than He_, and He is and must be antecedent to and independent of them. He istranscendent above all His works even while He is immanent within them. 

What now does the divine immanence mean in direct Christian experience?It means simply that _God is here_. Wherever we are, God is here. Thereis no place, there can be no place, where He is not. Ten millionintelligences standing at as many points in space and separated byincomprehensible distances can each one say with equal truth, God ishere. No point is nearer to God than any other point. It is exactly asnear to God from any place as it is from any other place. No one is inmere distance any further from or any nearer to God than any otherperson is. 

These are truths believed by every instructed Christian. It remains forus to think on them and pray over them until they begin to glow withinus. 

"In the beginning God. " Not _matter_, for matter is not self-causing. Itrequires an antecedent cause, and God is that Cause. Not _law_, for lawis but a name for the course which all creation follows. That course hadto be planned, and the Planner is God. Not _mind_, for mind also is acreated thing and must have a Creator back of it. In the beginning God, the uncaused Cause of matter, mind and law. There we must begin. 

Adam sinned and, in his panic, frantically tried to do the impossible:he tried to hide from the Presence of God. David also must have had wildthoughts of trying to escape from the Presence, for he wrote, "Whithershall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?"Then he proceeded through one of his most beautiful psalms to celebratethe glory of the divine immanence. "If I ascend up into heaven, thou artthere: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take thewings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; eventhere shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. " And heknew that God's _being_ and God's _seeing_ are the same, that the seeingPresence had been with him even before he was born, watching the mysteryof unfolding life. Solomon exclaimed, "But will God indeed dwell on theearth? behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee:how much less this house which I have builded. " Paul assured theAthenians that "God is not far from any one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being. "

If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He isnot, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has notthat Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world?The patriarch Jacob, "in the waste howling wilderness, " gave the answerto that question. He saw a vision of God and cried out in wonder, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. " Jacob had neverbeen for one small division of a moment outside the circle of thatall-pervading Presence. But he knew it not. That was his trouble, and itis ours. Men do not know that God is here. What a difference it wouldmake if they knew. 

The Presence and the manifestation of the Presence are not the same. There can be the one without the other. God is here when we are whollyunaware of it. He is _manifest_ only when and as we are aware of HisPresence. On our part there must be surrender to the Spirit of God, forHis work it is to show us the Father and the Son. If we co-operate withHim in loving obedience God will manifest Himself to us, and thatmanifestation will be the difference between a nominal Christian lifeand a life radiant with the light of His face. 

Always, everywhere God is present, and always He seeks to discoverHimself. To each one he would reveal not only that He is, but _what_ Heis as well. He did not have to be persuaded to discover Himself toMoses. "And the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. " He not only made a verbalproclamation of His nature but He revealed His very Self to Moses sothat the skin of Moses' face shone with the supernatural light. It willbe a great moment for some of us when we begin to believe that God'spromise of self-revelation is literally true: that He promised much, butpromised no more than He intends to fulfill. 

Our pursuit of God is successful just because He is forever seeking tomanifest Himself to us. The revelation of God to any man is not Godcoming from a distance upon a time to pay a brief and momentous visit tothe man's soul. Thus to think of it is to misunderstand it all. Theapproach of God to the soul or of the soul to God is not to be thoughtof in spatial terms at all. There is no idea of physical distanceinvolved in the concept. It is not a matter of miles but of experience. 

To speak of being near to or far from God is to use language in a sensealways understood when applied to our ordinary human relationships. Aman may say, "I feel that my son is coming nearer to me as he getsolder, " and yet that son has lived by his father's side since he wasborn and has never been away from home more than a day or so in hisentire life. What then can the father mean? Obviously he is speaking of_experience_. He means that the boy is coming to know him moreintimately and with deeper understanding, that the barriers of thoughtand feeling between the two are disappearing, that father and son arebecoming more closely united in mind and heart. 

So when we sing, "Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord, " we are notthinking of the nearness of place, but of the nearness of relationship. It is for increasing degrees of awareness that we pray, for a moreperfect consciousness of the divine Presence. We need never shout acrossthe spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer thanour most secret thoughts. 

Why do some persons "find" God in a way that others do not? Why does Godmanifest His Presence to some and let multitudes of others strugglealong in the half-light of imperfect Christian experience? Of course thewill of God is the same for all. He has no favorites within Hishousehold. All He has ever done for any of His children He will do forall of His children. The difference lies not with God but with us. 

Pick at random a score of great saints whose lives and testimonies arewidely known. Let them be Bible characters or well known Christians ofpost-Biblical times. You will be struck instantly with the fact thatthe saints were not alike. Sometimes the unlikenesses were so great asto be positively glaring. How different for example was Moses fromIsaiah; how different was Elijah from David; how unlike each other wereJohn and Paul, St. Francis and Luther, Finney and Thomas à Kempis. Thedifferences are as wide as human life itself: differences of race, nationality, education, temperament, habit and personal qualities. Yetthey all walked, each in his day, upon a high road of spiritual livingfar above the common way. 

Their differences must have been incidental and in the eyes of God of nosignificance. In some vital quality they must have been alike. What wasit?

I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in commonwas _spiritual receptivity_. Something in them was open to heaven, something which urged them Godward. Without attempting anything like aprofound analysis I shall say simply that they had spiritual awarenessand that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest thingin their lives. They differed from the average person in that when theyfelt the inward longing they _did something about it_. They acquired thelifelong habit of spiritual response. They were not disobedient to theheavenly vision. As David put it neatly, "When thou saidst, Seek ye myface; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek. "

As with everything good in human life, back of this receptivity is God. The sovereignty of God is here, and is felt even by those who have notplaced particular stress upon it theologically. The pious Michael Angeloconfessed this in a sonnet:

 My unassisted heart is barren clay, That of its native self can nothing feed: Of good and pious works Thou art the seed, That quickens only where Thou sayest it may: Unless Thou show to us Thine own true way No man can find it: Father! Thou must lead. 

These words will repay study as the deep and serious testimony of agreat Christian. 

Important as it is that we recognize God working in us, I would yet warnagainst a too-great preoccupation with the thought. It is a sure road tosterile passivity. God will not hold us responsible to understand themysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty. Thebest and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes toGod and in deepest reverence say, "O Lord, Thou knowest. " Those thingsbelong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Pryinginto them may make theologians, but it will never make saints. 

Receptivity is not a single thing; it is a compound rather, a blendingof several elements within the soul. It is an affinity for, a benttoward, a sympathetic response to, a desire to have. From this it may begathered that it can be present in degrees, that we may have little ormore or less, depending upon the individual. It may be increased byexercise or destroyed by neglect. It is not a sovereign and irresistibleforce which comes upon us as a seizure from above. It is a gift of God, indeed, but one which must be recognized and cultivated as any othergift if it is to realize the purpose for which it was given. 

Failure to see this is the cause of a very serious breakdown in modernevangelicalism. The idea of cultivation and exercise, so dear to thesaints of old, has now no place in our total religious picture. It istoo slow, too common. We now demand glamour and fast flowing dramaticaction. A generation of Christians reared among push buttons andautomatic machines is impatient of slower and less direct methods ofreaching their goals. We have been trying to apply machine-age methodsto our relations with God. We read our chapter, have our short devotionsand rush away, hoping to make up for our deep inward bankruptcy byattending another gospel meeting or listening to another thrilling storytold by a religious adventurer lately returned from afar. 

The tragic results of this spirit are all about us. Shallow lives, hollow religious philosophies, the preponderance of the element of funin gospel meetings, the glorification of men, trust in religiousexternalities, quasi-religious fellowships, salesmanship methods, themistaking of dynamic personality for the power of the Spirit: these andsuch as these are the symptoms of an evil disease, a deep and seriousmalady of the soul. 

For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been tooblind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desireanything better than the poor average diet with which others appearsatisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another'snotions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiencesthe model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worstof all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience andaccepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed. 

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage towrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblicalways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians havehad to do it. History has recorded several large-scale returns led bysuch men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunatelythere seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether ornot another such return may be expected before the coming of Christ is aquestion upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not oftoo great importance to us now. 

What God in His sovereignty may yet do on a world-scale I do not claimto know: but what He will do for the plain man or woman who seeks Hisface I believe I do know and can tell others. Let any man turn to God inearnest, let him begin to exercise himself unto godliness, let him seekto develop his powers of spiritual receptivity by trust and obedienceand humility, and the results will exceed anything he may have hoped inhis leaner and weaker days. 

Any man who by repentance and a sincere return to God will break himselfout of the mold in which he has been held, and will go to the Bibleitself for his spiritual standards, will be delighted with what he findsthere. 

Let us say it again: The Universal Presence is a fact. God is here. Thewhole universe is alive with His life. And He is no strange or foreignGod, but the familiar Father of our Lord Jesus Christ whose love has forthese thousands of years enfolded the sinful race of men. And always Heis trying to get our attention, to reveal Himself to us, to communicatewith us. We have within us the ability to know Him if we will butrespond to His overtures. (And this we call pursuing God!) We will knowHim in increasing degree as our receptivity becomes more perfect byfaith and love and practice. 

_O God and Father, I repent of my sinful preoccupation with visiblethings. The world has been too much with me. Thou hast been here and Iknew it not. I have been blind to Thy Presence. Open my eyes that I maybehold Thee in and around me. For Christ's sake, Amen. _

VI

_The Speaking Voice_

 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. --John 1:1

An intelligent plain man, untaught in the truths of Christianity, comingupon this text, would likely conclude that John meant to teach that itis the nature of God to speak, to communicate His thoughts to others. And he would be right. A word is a medium by which thoughts areexpressed, and the application of term to the Eternal Son leads us tobelieve that self-expression is inherent in the Godhead, that God isforever seeking to speak Himself out to His creation. The whole Biblesupports the idea. God is speaking. Not God spoke, but _God isspeaking_. He is by His nature continuously articulate. He fills theworld with His speaking Voice. 

One of the great realities with which we have to deal is the Voice ofGod in His world. The briefest and only satisfying cosmogony is this:"He spake and it was done. " The _why_ of natural law is the living Voiceof God immanent in His creation. And this word of God which brought allworlds into being cannot be understood to mean the Bible, for it is nota written or printed word at all, but the expression of the will of Godspoken into the structure of all things. This word of God is the breathof God filling the world with living potentiality. The Voice of God isthe most powerful force in nature, indeed the only force in nature, forall energy is here only because the power-filled Word is being spoken. 

The Bible is the written word of God, and because it is written it isconfined and limited by the necessities of ink and paper and leather. The Voice of God, however, is alive and free as the sovereign God isfree. "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they arelife. " The life is in the speaking words. God's word in the Bible canhave power only because it corresponds to God's word in the universe. Itis the present Voice which makes the written Word all-powerful. Otherwise it would lie locked in slumber within the covers of a book. 

We take a low and primitive view of things when we conceive of God atthe creation coming into physical contact with things, shaping andfitting and building like a carpenter. The Bible teaches otherwise: "Bythe word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them bythe breath of his mouth. .. . For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast. " "Through faith we understand that the worlds wereframed by the word of God. " Again we must remember that God is referringhere not to His written Word, but to His speaking Voice. Hisworld-filling Voice is meant, that Voice which antedates the Bible byuncounted centuries, that Voice which has not been silent since the dawnof creation, but is sounding still throughout the full far reaches ofthe universe. 

The Word of God is quick and powerful. In the beginning He spoke tonothing, and it became _something_. Chaos heard it and became order, darkness heard it and became light. "And God said--and it was so. " Thesetwin phrases, as cause and effect, occur throughout the Genesis story ofthe creation. The _said_ accounts for the _so_. The _so_ is the _said_put into the continuous present. 

That God is here and that He is speaking--these truths are back of allother Bible truths; without them there could be no revelation at all. God did not write a book and send it by messenger to be read at adistance by unaided minds. He spoke a Book and lives in His spokenwords, constantly speaking His words and causing the power of them topersist across the years. God breathed on clay and it became a man; Hebreathes on men and they become clay. "Return ye children of men" wasthe word spoken at the Fall by which God decreed the death of every man, and no added word has He needed to speak. The sad procession of mankindacross the face of the earth from birth to the grave is proof that Hisoriginal Word was enough. 

We have not given sufficient attention to that deep utterance in theBook of John, "That was the true Light, which lighteth every man thatcometh into the world. " Shift the punctuation around as we will and thetruth is still there: the Word of God affects the hearts of all men aslight in the soul. In the hearts of all men the light shines, the Wordsounds, and there is no escaping them. Something like this would ofnecessity be so if God is alive and in His world. And John says that itis so. Even those persons who have never heard of the Bible have stillbeen preached to with sufficient clarity to remove every excuse fromtheir hearts forever. "Which show the work of the law written in theirhearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts themean while either accusing or else excusing one another. " "For theinvisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power andGodhead; so that they are without excuse. "

This universal Voice of God was by the ancient Hebrews often calledWisdom, and was said to be everywhere sounding and searching throughoutthe earth, seeking some response from the sons of men. The eighthchapter of the Book of Proverbs begins, "Doth not wisdom cry? andunderstanding put forth her voice?" The writer then pictures wisdom as abeautiful woman standing "in the top of the high places, by the way inthe places of the paths. " She sounds her voice from every quarter sothat no one may miss hearing it. "Unto you, O men, I call; and my voiceis to the sons of men. " Then she pleads for the simple and the foolishto give ear to her words. It is spiritual response for which this Wisdomof God is pleading, a response which she has always sought and is butrarely able to secure. The tragedy is that our eternal welfare dependsupon our hearing, and we have trained our ears not to hear. 

This universal Voice has ever sounded, and it has often troubled meneven when they did not understand the source of their fears. Could it bethat this Voice distilling like a living mist upon the hearts of men hasbeen the undiscovered cause of the troubled conscience and the longingfor immortality confessed by millions since the dawn of recordedhistory? We need not fear to face up to this. The speaking Voice is afact. How men have reacted to it is for any observer to note. 

When God spoke out of heaven to our Lord, self-centered men who heard itexplained it by natural causes: they said, "It thundered. " This habitof explaining the Voice by appeals to natural law is at the very root ofmodern science. In the living breathing cosmos there is a mysteriousSomething, too wonderful, too awful for any mind to understand. Thebelieving man does not claim to understand. He falls to his knees andwhispers, "God. " The man of earth kneels also, but not to worship. Hekneels to examine, to search, to find the cause and the how of things. Just now we happen to be living in a secular age. Our thought habits arethose of the scientist, not those of the worshipper. We are more likelyto explain than to adore. "It thundered, " we exclaim, and go our earthlyway. But still the Voice sounds and searches. The order and life of theworld depend upon that Voice, but men are mostly too busy or toostubborn to give attention. 

Everyone of us has had experiences which we have not been able toexplain: a sudden sense of loneliness, or a feeling of wonder or awe inthe face of the universal vastness. Or we have had a fleeting visitationof light like an illumination from some other sun, giving us in a quickflash an assurance that we are from another world, that our origins aredivine. What we saw there, or felt, or heard, may have been contrary toall that we had been taught in the schools and at wide variance with allour former beliefs and opinions. We were forced to suspend our acquireddoubts while, for a moment, the clouds were rolled back and we saw andheard for ourselves. Explain such things as we will, I think we have notbeen fair to the facts until we allow at least the possibility that suchexperiences may arise from the Presence of God in the world and Hispersistent effort to communicate with mankind. Let us not dismiss suchan hypothesis too flippantly. 

It is my own belief (and here I shall not feel bad if no one follows me)that every good and beautiful thing which man has produced in the worldhas been the result of his faulty and sin-blocked response to thecreative Voice sounding over the earth. The moral philosophers whodreamed their high dreams of virtue, the religious thinkers whospeculated about God and immortality, the poets and artists who createdout of common stuff pure and lasting beauty: how can we explain them? Itis not enough to say simply, "It was genius. " What then is genius? Couldit be that a genius is a man haunted by the speaking Voice, laboring andstriving like one possessed to achieve ends which he only vaguelyunderstands? That the great man may have missed God in his labors, thathe may even have spoken or written against God does not destroy the ideaI am advancing. God's redemptive revelation in the Holy Scriptures isnecessary to saving faith and peace with God. Faith in a risen Saviouris necessary if the vague stirrings toward immortality are to bring usto restful and satisfying communion with God. To me this is a plausibleexplanation of all that is best out of Christ. But you can be a goodChristian and not accept my thesis. 

The Voice of God is a friendly Voice. No one need fear to listen to itunless he has already made up his mind to resist it. The blood of Jesushas covered not only the human race but all creation as well. "Andhaving made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcileall things unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven. " We may safely preach a friendly Heaven. Theheavens as well as the earth are filled with the good will of Him thatdwelt in the bush. The perfect blood of atonement secures this forever. 

Whoever will listen will hear the speaking Heaven. This is definitelynot the hour when men take kindly to an exhortation to _listen_, forlistening is not today a part of popular religion. We are at theopposite end of the pole from there. Religion has accepted the monstrousheresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God. But we may take heart. To a people caught in the tempest of the lastgreat conflict God says, "Be still, and know that I am God, " and stillHe says it, as if He means to tell us that our strength and safety lienot in noise but in silence. 

It is important that we get still to wait on God. And it is best that weget alone, preferably with our Bible outspread before us. Then if wewill we may draw near to God and begin to hear Him speak to us in ourhearts. I think for the average person the progression will be somethinglike this: First a sound as of a Presence walking in the garden. Then avoice, more intelligible, but still far from clear. Then the happymoment when the Spirit begins to illuminate the Scriptures, and thatwhich had been only a sound, or at best a voice, now becomes anintelligible word, warm and intimate and clear as the word of a dearfriend. Then will come life and light, and best of all, ability to seeand rest in and embrace Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord and All. 

The Bible will never be a living Book to us until we are convinced thatGod is articulate in His universe. To jump from a dead, impersonal worldto a dogmatic Bible is too much for most people. They may admit thatthey _should_ accept the Bible as the Word of God, and they may try tothink of it as such, but they find it impossible to believe that thewords there on the page are actually for them. A man may _say_, "Thesewords are addressed to me, " and yet in his heart not feel and know thatthey are. He is the victim of a divided psychology. He tries to think ofGod as mute everywhere else and vocal only in a book. 

I believe that much of our religious unbelief is due to a wrongconception of and a wrong feeling for the Scriptures of Truth. A silentGod suddenly began to speak in a book and when the book was finishedlapsed back into silence again forever. Now we read the book as therecord of what God said when He was for a brief time in a speaking mood. With notions like that in our heads how can we believe? The facts arethat God is not silent, has never been silent. It is the nature of Godto speak. The second Person of the Holy Trinity is called the _Word_. The Bible is the inevitable outcome of God's continuous speech. It isthe infallible declaration of His mind for us put into our familiarhuman words. 

I think a new world will arise out of the religious mists when weapproach our Bible with the idea that it is not only a book which wasonce spoken, but a book which is _now speaking_. The prophets habituallysaid, "Thus _saith_ the Lord. " They meant their hearers to understandthat God's speaking is in the continuous present. We may use the pasttense properly to indicate that at a certain time a certain word of Godwas spoken, but a word of God once spoken continues to be spoken, as achild once born continues to be alive, or a world once created continuesto exist. And those are but imperfect illustrations, for children dieand worlds burn out, but the Word of our God endureth forever. 

If you would follow on to know the Lord, come at once to the open Bibleexpecting it to speak to you. Do not come with the notion that it is a_thing_ which you may push around at your convenience. It is more thana thing, it is a voice, a word, the very Word of the living God. 

_Lord, teach me to listen. The times are noisy and my ears are wearywith the thousand raucous sounds which continuously assault them. Giveme the spirit of the boy Samuel when he said to Thee, "Speak, for thyservant heareth. " Let me hear Thee speaking in my heart. Let me get usedto the sound of Thy Voice, that its tones may be familiar when thesounds of earth die away and the only sound will be the music of Thyspeaking Voice. Amen. _

VII

_The Gaze of the Soul_

 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. --Heb. 12:2

Let us think of our intelligent plain man mentioned in chapter sixcoming for the first time to the reading of the Scriptures. Heapproaches the Bible without any previous knowledge of what it contains. He is wholly without prejudice; he has nothing to prove and nothing todefend. 

Such a man will not have read long until his mind begins to observecertain truths standing out from the page. They are the spiritualprinciples behind the record of God's dealings with men, and woven intothe writings of holy men as they "were moved by the Holy Ghost. " As hereads on he might want to number these truths as they become clear tohim and make a brief summary under each number. These summaries will bethe tenets of his Biblical creed. Further reading will not affect thesepoints except to enlarge and strengthen them. Our man is finding outwhat the Bible actually teaches. 

High up on the list of things which the Bible teaches will be thedoctrine of _faith_. The place of weighty importance which the Biblegives to faith will be too plain for him to miss. He will very likelyconclude: Faith is all-important in the life of the soul. Without faithit is impossible to please God. Faith will get me anything, take meanywhere in the Kingdom of God, but without faith there can be noapproach to God, no forgiveness, no deliverance, no salvation, nocommunion, no spiritual life at all. 

By the time our friend has reached the eleventh chapter of Hebrews theeloquent encomium which is there pronounced upon faith will not seemstrange to him. He will have read Paul's powerful defense of faith inhis Roman and Galatian epistles. Later if he goes on to study churchhistory he will understand the amazing power in the teachings of theReformers as they showed the central place of faith in the Christianreligion. 

Now if faith is so vitally important, if it is an indispensable _must_in our pursuit of God, it is perfectly natural that we should be deeplyconcerned over whether or not we possess this most precious gift. Andour minds being what they are, it is inevitable that sooner or later weshould get around to inquiring after the nature of faith. What _is_faith? would lie close to the question, Do I _have_ faith? and woulddemand an answer if it were anywhere to be found. 

Almost all who preach or write on the subject of faith have much thesame things to say concerning it. They tell us that it is believing apromise, that it is taking God at His word, that it is reckoning theBible to be true and stepping out upon it. The rest of the book orsermon is usually taken up with stories of persons who have had theirprayers answered as a result of their faith. These answers are mostlydirect gifts of a practical and temporal nature such as health, money, physical protection or success in business. Or if the teacher is of aphilosophic turn of mind he may take another course and lose us in awelter of metaphysics or snow us under with psychological jargon as hedefines and re-defines, paring the slender hair of faith thinner andthinner till it disappears in gossamer shavings at last. When he isfinished we get up disappointed and go out "by that same door where inwe went. " Surely there must be something better than this. 

In the Scriptures there is practically no effort made to define faith. Outside of a brief fourteen-word definition in Hebrews 11:1, I know ofno Biblical definition, and even there faith is defined functionally, not philosophically; that is, it is a statement of what faith is _inoperation_, _not_ what it is _in essence_. It assumes the presence offaith and shows what it results in, rather than what it is. We will bewise to go just that far and attempt to go no further. We are told fromwhence it comes and by what means: "Faith is a gift of God, " and "Faithcometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. " This much is clear, and, to paraphrase Thomas à Kempis, "I had rather exercise faith thanknow the definition thereof. "

From here on, when the words "faith is" or their equivalent occur inthis chapter I ask that they be understood to refer to what faith is inoperation as exercised by a believing man. Right here we drop the notionof definition and think about faith as it may be experienced in action. The complexion of our thoughts will be practical, not theoretical. 

In a dramatic story in the Book of Numbers faith is seen in action. Israel became discouraged and spoke against God, and the Lord sent fieryserpents among them. "And they bit the people; and much people of Israeldied. " Then Moses sought the Lord for them and He heard and gave them aremedy against the bite of the serpents. He commanded Moses to make aserpent of brass and put it upon a pole in sight of all the people, "andit shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he lookethupon it, shall live. " Moses obeyed, "and it came to pass, that if aserpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, helived" (Num. 21:4-9). 

In the New Testament this important bit of history is interpreted for usby no less an authority than our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He isexplaining to His hearers how they may be saved. He tells them that itis by believing. Then to make it clear He refers to this incident in theBook of Numbers. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, evenso must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in himshould not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14-15). 

Our plain man in reading this would make an important discovery. Hewould notice that "look" and "believe" were synonymous terms. "Looking"on the Old Testament serpent is identical with "believing" on the NewTestament Christ. That is, the _looking_ and the _believing_ are thesame thing. And he would understand that while Israel looked with theirexternal eyes, believing is done with the heart. I think he wouldconclude that _faith is the gaze of a soul upon a saving God_. 

When he had seen this he would remember passages he had read before, andtheir meaning would come flooding over him. "They looked unto him, andwere lightened: and their faces were not ashamed" (Psa. 34:5). "Untothee lift I up mine eyes, O thou that dwellest in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as theeyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait uponthe Lord our God, until that he have mercy upon us" (Psa. 123:1-2). Herethe man seeking mercy looks straight at the God of mercy and never takeshis eyes away from Him till mercy is granted. And our Lord Himselflooked always at God. "Looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, andgave the bread to his disciples" (Matt. 14:19). Indeed Jesus taught thatHe wrought His works by always keeping His inward eyes upon His Father. His power lay in His continuous look at God (John 5:19-21). 

In full accord with the few texts we have quoted is the whole tenor ofthe inspired Word. It is summed up for us in the Hebrew epistle when weare instructed to run life's race "looking unto Jesus the author andfinisher of our faith. " From all this we learn that faith is not aonce-done act, but a continuous gaze of the heart at the Triune God. 

Believing, then, is directing the heart's attention to Jesus. It islifting the mind to "behold the Lamb of God, " and never ceasing thatbeholding for the rest of our lives. At first this may be difficult, butit becomes easier as we look steadily at His wondrous Person, quietlyand without strain. Distractions may hinder, but once the heart iscommitted to Him, after each brief excursion away from Him the attentionwill return again and rest upon Him like a wandering bird coming back toits window. 

I would emphasize this one committal, this one great volitional actwhich establishes the heart's intention to gaze forever upon Jesus. Godtakes this intention for our choice and makes what allowances He mustfor the thousand distractions which beset us in this evil world. Heknows that we have set the direction of our hearts toward Jesus, and wecan know it too, and comfort ourselves with the knowledge that a habitof soul is forming which will become after a while a sort of spiritualreflex requiring no more conscious effort on our part. 

Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its verynature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which seeseverything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied withthe Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves--blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing butrepeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkeringwith his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks atChrist the very things he has so long been trying to do will be gettingdone within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do. 

Faith is not in itself a meritorious act; the merit is in the One towardWhom it is directed. Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting outof the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus. Sin hastwisted our vision inward and made it self-regarding. Unbelief has putself where God should be, and is perilously close to the sin of Luciferwho said, "I will set my throne above the throne of God. " Faith looks_out_ instead of _in_ and the whole life falls into line. 

All this may seem too simple. But we have no apology to make. To thosewho would seek to climb into heaven after help or descend into hell Godsays, "The word is nigh thee, even the word of faith. " The word inducesus to lift up our eyes unto the Lord and the blessed work of faithbegins. 

When we lift our inward eyes to gaze upon God we are sure to meetfriendly eyes gazing back at us, for it is written that the eyes of theLord run to and fro throughout all the earth. The sweet language ofexperience is "Thou God seest me. " When the eyes of the soul looking outmeet the eyes of God looking in, heaven has begun right here on thisearth. 

"When all my endeavour is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavouris turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because Thou dost enfold mewith Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alonebecause Thou, who art Love's self hast turned Thee toward me alone. Andwhat, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsomesweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?"[1] So wrote Nicholas of Cusa fourhundred years ago. 

I should like to say more about this old man of God. He is not muchknown today anywhere among Christian believers, and among currentFundamentalists he is known not at all. I feel that we could gain muchfrom a little acquaintance with men of his spiritual flavor and theschool of Christian thought which they represent. Christian literature, to be accepted and approved by the evangelical leaders of our times, must follow very closely the same train of thought, a kind of "partyline" from which it is scarcely safe to depart. A half-century of thisin America has made us smug and content. We imitate each other withslavish devotion and our most strenuous efforts are put forth to try tosay the same thing that everyone around us is saying--and yet to find anexcuse for saying it, some little safe variation on the approved themeor, if no more, at least a new illustration. 

Nicholas was a true follower of Christ, a lover of the Lord, radiant andshining in his devotion to the Person of Jesus. His theology wasorthodox, but fragrant and sweet as everything about Jesus mightproperly be expected to be. His conception of eternal life, forinstance, is beautiful in itself and, if I mistake not, is nearer inspirit to John 17:3 than that which is current among us today. Lifeeternal, says Nicholas, is "nought other than that blessed regardwherewith Thou never ceasest to behold me, yea, even the secret placesof my soul. With Thee, to behold is to give life; 'tis unceasingly toimpart sweetest love of Thee; 'tis to inflame me to love of Thee bylove's imparting, and to feed me by inflaming, and by feeding to kindlemy yearning, and by kindling to make me drink of the dew of gladness, and by drinking to infuse in me a fountain of life, and by infusing tomake it increase and endure. "[2]

Now, if faith is the gaze of the heart at God, and if this gaze is butthe raising of the inward eyes to meet the all-seeing eyes of God, thenit follows that it is one of the easiest things possible to do. It wouldbe like God to make the most vital thing easy and place it within therange of possibility for the weakest and poorest of us. 

Several conclusions may fairly be drawn from all this. The simplicity ofit, for instance. Since believing is looking, it can be done withoutspecial equipment or religious paraphernalia. God has seen to it thatthe one life-and-death essential can never be subject to the caprice ofaccident. Equipment can break down or get lost, water can leak away, records can be destroyed by fire, the minister can be delayed or thechurch burn down. All these are external to the soul and are subject toaccident or mechanical failure: but _looking_ is of the heart and can bedone successfully by any man standing up or kneeling down or lying inhis last agony a thousand miles from any church. 

Since believing is looking it can be done _any time_. No season issuperior to another season for this sweetest of all acts. God never madesalvation depend upon new moons nor holy days or sabbaths. A man is notnearer to Christ on Easter Sunday than he is, say, on Saturday, August3, or Monday, October 4. As long as Christ sits on the mediatorialthrone every day is a good day and all days are days of salvation. 

Neither does _place_ matter in this blessed work of believing God. Liftyour heart and let it rest upon Jesus and you are instantly in asanctuary though it be a Pullman berth or a factory or a kitchen. Youcan see God from anywhere if your mind is set to love and obey Him. 

Now, someone may ask, "Is not this of which you speak for specialpersons such as monks or ministers who have by the nature of theircalling more time to devote to quiet meditation? I am a busy worker andhave little time to spend alone. " I am happy to say that the life Idescribe is for everyone of God's children regardless of calling. It is, in fact, happily practiced every day by many hard working persons and isbeyond the reach of none. 

Many have found the secret of which I speak and, without giving muchthought to what is going on within them, constantly practice this habitof inwardly gazing upon God. They know that something inside theirhearts sees God. Even when they are compelled to withdraw theirconscious attention in order to engage in earthly affairs there iswithin them a secret communion always going on. Let their attention butbe released for a moment from necessary business and it flies at once toGod again. This has been the testimony of many Christians, so many thateven as I state it thus I have a feeling that I am quoting, though fromwhom or from how many I cannot possibly know. 

I do not want to leave the impression that the ordinary means of gracehave no value. They most assuredly have. Private prayer should bepracticed by every Christian. Long periods of Bible meditation willpurify our gaze and direct it; church attendance will enlarge ouroutlook and increase our love for others. Service and work and activity;all are good and should be engaged in by every Christian. But at thebottom of all these things, giving meaning to them, will be the inwardhabit of beholding God. A new set of eyes (so to speak) will developwithin us enabling us to be looking at God while our outward eyes areseeing the scenes of this passing world. 

Someone may fear that we are magnifying private religion out of allproportion, that the "us" of the New Testament is being displaced by aselfish "I. " Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos alltuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They areof one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standardto which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshippers mettogether, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to eachother than they could possibly be were they to become "unity" consciousand turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. Social religion is perfected when private religion is purified. The bodybecomes stronger as its members become healthier. The whole Church ofGod gains when the members that compose it begin to seek a better and ahigher life. 

All the foregoing presupposes true repentance and a full committal ofthe life to God. It is hardly necessary to mention this, for onlypersons who have made such a committal will have read this far. 

When the habit of inwardly gazing Godward becomes fixed within us weshall be ushered onto a new level of spiritual life more in keeping withthe promises of God and the mood of the New Testament. The Triune Godwill be our dwelling place even while our feet walk the low road ofsimple duty here among men. We will have found life's _summum bonum_indeed. "There is the source of all delights that can be desired; notonly can nought better be thought out by men and angels, but noughtbetter can exist in mode of being! For it is the absolute maximum ofevery rational desire, than which a greater cannot be. "[3]

_O Lord, I have heard a good word inviting me to look away to Thee andbe satisfied. My heart longs to respond, but sin has clouded my visiontill I see Thee but dimly. Be pleased to cleanse me in Thine ownprecious blood, and make me inwardly pure, so that I may with unveiledeyes gaze upon Thee all the days of my earthly pilgrimage. Then shall Ibe prepared to behold Thee in full splendor in the day when Thou shaltappear to be glorified in Thy saints and admired in all them thatbelieve. Amen. _

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Nicholas of Cusa, _The Vision of God_, E. P. Dutton & Co. , Inc. , NewYork, 1928. This and the following quotations used by kind permission ofthe publishers. 

[2] _The Vision of God_

[3] _The Vision of God_

VIII

_Restoring the Creator-creature Relation_

 Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth. --Psa. 57:5

It is a truism to say that order in nature depends upon rightrelationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its properposition relative to each other thing. In human life it is nototherwise. 

I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our humanmiseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to Godand to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was mostcertainly a sharp change in man's relation to his Creator. He adoptedtoward God an altered attitude, and by so doing destroyed the properCreator-creature relation in which, unknown to him, his true happinesslay. Essentially salvation is the restoration of a right relationbetween man and his Creator, a bringing back to normal of theCreator-creature relation. 

A satisfactory spiritual life will begin with a complete change inrelation between God and the sinner; not a judicial change merely, but aconscious and experienced change affecting the sinner's whole nature. The atonement in Jesus' blood makes such a change judicially possibleand the working of the Holy Spirit makes it emotionally satisfying. Thestory of the prodigal son perfectly illustrates this latter phase. Hehad brought a world of trouble upon himself by forsaking the positionwhich he had properly held as son of his father. At bottom hisrestoration was nothing more than a re-establishing of the father-sonrelation which had existed from his birth and had been alteredtemporarily by his act of sinful rebellion. This story overlooks thelegal aspects of redemption, but it makes beautifully clear theexperiential aspects of salvation. 

In determining relationships we must begin somewhere. There must besomewhere a fixed center against which everything else is measured, where the law of relativity does not enter and we can say "IS" and makeno allowances. Such a center is God. When God would make His Name knownto mankind He could find no better word than "I AM. " When He speaks inthe first person He says, "I AM"; when we speak of Him we say, "He is";when we speak to Him we say, "Thou art. " Everyone and everything elsemeasures from that fixed point. "I am that I am, " says God, "I change not. "

As the sailor locates his position on the sea by "shooting" the sun, sowe may get our moral bearings by looking at God. We must begin with God. We are right when and only when we stand in a right position relative toGod, and we are wrong so far and so long as we stand in any otherposition. 

Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from ourunwillingness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. Weinsist upon trying to modify Him and to bring Him nearer to our ownimage. The flesh whimpers against the rigor of God's inexorable sentenceand begs like Agag for a little mercy, a little indulgence of its carnalways. It is no use. We can get a right start only by accepting God as Heis and learning to love Him for what He is. As we go on to know Himbetter we shall find it a source of unspeakable joy that God is justwhat He is. Some of the most rapturous moments we know will be those wespend in reverent admiration of the Godhead. In those holy moments thevery thought of change in Him will be too painful to endure. 

So let us begin with God. Back of all, above all, before all is God;first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignityand honor. As the self-existent One He gave being to all things, and allthings exist out of Him and for Him. "Thou art worthy, O Lord, toreceive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created. "

Every soul belongs to God and exists by His pleasure. God being Who andWhat He is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkablerelation between us is one of full lordship on His part and completesubmission on ours. We owe Him every honor that it is in our power togive Him. Our everlasting grief lies in giving Him anything less. 

The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our totalpersonality into conformity to His. And this not judicially, butactually. I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith inChrist. I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to His proper stationover us and a willing surrender of our whole being to the place ofworshipful submission which the Creator-creature circumstance makesproper. 

The moment we make up our minds that we are going on with thisdetermination to exalt God over all we step out of the world's parade. We shall find ourselves out of adjustment to the ways of the world, andincreasingly so as we make progress in the holy way. We shall acquire anew viewpoint; a new and different psychology will be formed within us;a new power will begin to surprise us by its upsurgings and itsoutgoings. 

Our break with the world will be the direct outcome of our changedrelation to God. For the world of fallen men does not honor God. Millions call themselves by His Name, it is true, and pay some tokenrespect to Him, but a simple test will show how little He is reallyhonored among them. Let the average man be put to the proof on thequestion of who is _above_, and his true position will be exposed. Lethim be forced into making a choice between God and money, between Godand men, between God and personal ambition, God and self, God and humanlove, and God will take second place every time. Those other things willbe exalted above. However the man may protest, the proof is in thechoices he makes day after day throughout his life. 

"Be thou exalted" is the language of victorious spiritual experience. Itis a little key to unlock the door to great treasures of grace. It iscentral in the life of God in the soul. Let the seeking man reach aplace where life and lips join to say continually "Be thou exalted, " anda thousand minor problems will be solved at once. His Christian lifeceases to be the complicated thing it had been before and becomes thevery essence of simplicity. By the exercise of his will he has set hiscourse, and on that course he will stay as if guided by an automaticpilot. If blown off course for a moment by some adverse wind he willsurely return again as by a secret bent of the soul. The hidden motionsof the Spirit are working in his favor, and "the stars in their courses"fight for him. He has met his life problem at its center, andeverything else must follow along. 

Let no one imagine that he will lose anything of human dignity by thisvoluntary sell-out of his all to his God. He does not by this degradehimself as a man; rather he finds his right place of high honor as onemade in the image of his Creator. His deep disgrace lay in his moralderangement, his unnatural usurpation of the place of God. His honorwill be proved by restoring again that stolen throne. In exalting Godover all he finds his own highest honor upheld. 

Anyone who might feel reluctant to surrender his will to the will ofanother should remember Jesus' words, "Whosoever committeth sin is theservant of sin. " We must of necessity be servant to someone, either toGod or to sin. The sinner prides himself on his independence, completelyoverlooking the fact that he is the weak slave of the sins that rule hismembers. The man who surrenders to Christ exchanges a cruel slave driverfor a kind and gentle Master whose yoke is easy and whose burden islight. 

Made as we were in the image of God we scarcely find it strange to takeagain our God as our All. God was our original habitat and our heartscannot but feel at home when they enter again that ancient and beautifulabode. 

I hope it is clear that there is a logic behind God's claim topre-eminence. That place is His by every right in earth or heaven. Whilewe take to ourselves the place that is His the whole course of ourlives is out of joint. Nothing will or can restore order till our heartsmake the great decision: God shall be exalted above. 

"Them that honour me I will honour, " said God once to a priest ofIsrael, and that ancient law of the Kingdom stands today unchanged bythe passing of time or the changes of dispensation. The whole Bible andevery page of history proclaim the perpetuation of that law. "If any manserve me, him will my Father honour, " said our Lord Jesus, tying in theold with the new and revealing the essential unity of His ways with men. 

Sometimes the best way to see a thing is to look at its opposite. Eliand his sons are placed in the priesthood with the stipulation that theyhonor God in their lives and ministrations. This they fail to do, andGod sends Samuel to announce the consequences. Unknown to Eli this lawof reciprocal honor has been all the while secretly working, and now thetime has come for judgment to fall. Hophni and Phineas, the degeneratepriests, fall in battle, the wife of Hophni dies in childbirth, Israelflees before her enemies, the ark of God is captured by the Philistinesand the old man Eli falls backward and dies of a broken neck. Thus starkutter tragedy followed upon Eli's failure to honor God. 

Now set over against this almost any Bible character who honestly triedto glorify God in his earthly walk. See how God winked at weaknessesand overlooked failures as He poured upon His servants grace andblessing untold. Let it be Abraham, Jacob, David, Daniel, Elijah or whomyou will; honor followed honor as harvest the seed. The man of God sethis heart to exalt God above all; God accepted his intention as fact andacted accordingly. Not perfection, but holy intention made thedifference. 

In our Lord Jesus Christ this law was seen in simple perfection. In Hislowly manhood He humbled Himself and gladly gave all glory to His Fatherin heaven. He sought not His own honor, but the honor of God who sentHim. "If I honour myself, " He said on one occasion, "my honour isnothing; it is my Father that honoureth me. " So far had the proudPharisees departed from this law that they could not understand one whohonored God at his own expense. "I honour my Father, " said Jesus tothem, "and ye do dishonour me. "

Another saying of Jesus, and a most disturbing one, was put in the formof a question, "How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God alone?" If I understandthis correctly Christ taught here the alarming doctrine that the desirefor honor among men made belief impossible. Is this sin at the root ofreligious unbelief? Could it be that those "intellectual difficulties"which men blame for their inability to believe are but smoke screens toconceal the real cause that lies behind them? Was it this greedy desirefor honor from man that made men into Pharisees and Pharisees intoDeicides? Is this the secret back of religious self-righteousness andempty worship? I believe it may be. The whole course of the life isupset by failure to put God where He belongs. We exalt ourselves insteadof God and the curse follows. 

In our desire after God let us keep always in mind that God also hathdesire, and His desire is toward the sons of men, and more particularlytoward those sons of men who will make the once-for-all decision toexalt Him over all. Such as these are precious to God above alltreasures of earth or sea. In them God finds a theater where He candisplay His exceeding kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. With them Godcan walk unhindered, toward them He can act like the God He is. 

In speaking thus I have one fear; it is that I may convince the mindbefore God can win the heart. For this God-above-all position is one noteasy to take. The mind may approve it while not having the consent ofthe will to put it into effect. While the imagination races ahead tohonor God, the will may lag behind and the man never guess how dividedhis heart is. The whole man must make the decision before the heart canknow any real satisfaction. God wants us all, and He will not rest tillHe gets us all. No part of the man will do. 

Let us pray over this in detail, throwing ourselves at God's feet andmeaning everything we say. No one who prays thus in sincerity need waitlong for tokens of divine acceptance. God will unveil His glory beforeHis servant's eyes, and He will place all His treasures at the disposalof such a one, for He knows that His honor is safe in such consecratedhands. 

_O God, be Thou exalted over my possessions. Nothing of earth'streasures shall seem dear unto me if only Thou art glorified in my life. Be Thou exalted over my friendships. I am determined that Thou shalt beabove all, though I must stand deserted and alone in the midst of theearth. Be Thou exalted above my comforts. Though it mean the loss ofbodily comforts and the carrying of heavy crosses I shall keep my vowmade this day before Thee. Be Thou exalted over my reputation. Make meambitious to please Thee even if as a result I must sink into obscurityand my name be forgotten as a dream. Rise, O Lord, into Thy proper placeof honor, above my ambitions, above my likes and dislikes, above myfamily, my health and even my life itself. Let me decrease that Thoumayest increase, let me sink that Thou mayest rise above. Ride forthupon me as Thou didst ride into Jerusalem mounted upon the humble littlebeast, a colt, the foal of an ass, and let me hear the children cry toThee, "Hosanna in the highest. "_

IX

_Meekness and Rest_

 Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. --Matt. 5:5

A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished oneunacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong sideout and saying, "Here is your human race. " For the exact opposite of thevirtues in the Beatitudes are the very qualities which distinguish humanlife and conduct. 

In the world of men we find nothing approaching the virtues of whichJesus spoke in the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; insteadof mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance;instead of hunger after righteousness we hear men saying, "I am rich andincreased with goods and have need of nothing"; instead of mercy we findcruelty; instead of purity of heart, corrupt imaginings; instead ofpeacemakers we find men quarrelsome and resentful; instead of rejoicingin mistreatment we find them fighting back with every weapon at theircommand. 

Of this kind of moral stuff civilized society is composed. Theatmosphere is charged with it; we breathe it with every breath and drinkit with our mother's milk. Culture and education refine these thingsslightly but leave them basically untouched. A whole world of literaturehas been created to justify this kind of life as the only normal one. And this is the more to be wondered at seeing that these are the evilswhich make life the bitter struggle it is for all of us. All ourheartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out ofour sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice, greed: these are the sources of more human pain than all the diseasesthat ever afflicted mortal flesh. 

Into a world like this the sound of Jesus' words comes wonderful andstrange, a visitation from above. It is well that He spoke, for no oneelse could have done it as well; and it is good that we listen. Hiswords are the essence of truth. He is not offering an opinion; Jesusnever uttered opinions. He never guessed; He knew, and He knows. Hiswords are not as Solomon's were, the sum of sound wisdom or the resultsof keen observation. He spoke out of the fulness of His Godhead, and Hiswords are very Truth itself. He is the only one who could say "blessed"with complete authority, for He is the Blessed One come from the worldabove to confer blessedness upon mankind. And His words were supportedby deeds mightier than any performed on this earth by any other man. Itis wisdom for us to listen. 

As was often so with Jesus, He used this word "meek" in a brief crispsentence, and not till some time later did He go on to explain it. Inthe same book of Matthew He tells us more about it and applies it to ourlives. "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I willgive you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek andlowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke iseasy, and my burden is light. " Here we have two things standing incontrast to each other, a burden and a rest. The burden is not a localone, peculiar to those first hearers, but one which is borne by thewhole human race. It consists not of political oppression or poverty orhard work. It is far deeper than that. It is felt by the rich as well asthe poor for it is something from which wealth and idleness can neverdeliver us. 

The burden borne by mankind is a heavy and a crushing thing. The wordJesus used means a load carried or toil borne to the point ofexhaustion. Rest is simply release from that burden. It is notsomething we do, it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His ownmeekness, that is the rest. 

Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacksthe heart and the mind and reaches the body only from within. First, there is the burden of _pride_. The labor of self-love is a heavy oneindeed. Think for yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisenfrom someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself upas a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who willdelight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to haveinward peace? The heart's fierce effort to protect itself from everyslight, to shield its touchy honor from the bad opinion of friend andenemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight throughthe years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet the sons of earthare carrying this burden continually, challenging every word spokenagainst them, cringing under every criticism, smarting under eachfancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them. 

Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to Hisrest, and meekness is His method. The meek man cares not at all who isgreater than he, for he has long ago decided that the esteem of theworld is not worth the effort. He develops toward himself a kindly senseof humor and learns to say, "Oh, so you have been overlooked? They haveplaced someone else before you? They have whispered that you are prettysmall stuff after all? And now you feel hurt because the world is sayingabout you the very things you have been saying about yourself? Onlyyesterday you were telling God that you were nothing, a mere worm of thedust. Where is your consistency? Come on, humble yourself, and cease tocare what men think. "

The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his owninferiority. Rather he may be in his moral life as bold as a lion and asstrong as Samson; but he has stopped being fooled about himself. He hasaccepted God's estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak andhelpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows atthe same time that he is in the sight of God of more importance thanangels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. Heknows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he hasstopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place His ownvalues. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will getits own price tag and real worth will come into its own. Then therighteous shall shine forth in the Kingdom of their Father. He iswilling to wait for that day. 

In the meantime he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he walkson in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggleto defend himself is over. He has found the peace which meeknessbrings. 

Then also he will get deliverance from the burden of _pretense_. By thisI mean not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best footforward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. For sin hasplayed many evil tricks upon us, and one has been the infusing into us afalse sense of shame. There is hardly a man or woman who dares to bejust what he or she is without doctoring up the impression. The fear ofbeing found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts. The man ofculture is haunted by the fear that he will some day come upon a manmore cultured than himself. The learned man fears to meet a man morelearned than he. The rich man sweats under the fear that his clothes orhis car or his house will sometime be made to look cheap by comparisonwith those of another rich man. So-called "society" runs by a motivationnot higher than this, and the poorer classes on their level are littlebetter. 

Let no one smile this off. These burdens are real, and little by littlethey kill the victims of this evil and unnatural way of life. And thepsychology created by years of this kind of thing makes true meeknessseem as unreal as a dream, as aloof as a star. To all the victims of thegnawing disease Jesus says, "Ye must become as little children. " Forlittle children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from whatthey have without relating it to something else or someone else. Onlyas they get older and sin begins to stir within their hearts do jealousyand envy appear. Then they are unable to enjoy what they have if someoneelse has something larger or better. At that early age does the gallingburden come down upon their tender souls, and it never leaves them tillJesus sets them free. 

Another source of burden is _artificiality_. I am sure that most peoplelive in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance anenemy or friend will be allowed to peep into their poor empty souls. Sothey are never relaxed. Bright people are tense and alert in fear thatthey may be trapped into saying something common or stupid. Traveledpeople are afraid that they may meet some Marco Polo who is able todescribe some remote place where they have never been. 

This unnatural condition is part of our sad heritage of sin, but in ourday it is aggravated by our whole way of life. Advertising is largelybased upon this habit of pretense. "Courses" are offered in this or thatfield of human learning frankly appealing to the victim's desire toshine at a party. Books are sold, clothes and cosmetics are peddled, byplaying continually upon this desire to appear what we are not. Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel atJesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will notcare what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then _what weare_ will be everything; what we appear will take its place far downthe scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which tobe ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear otherthan we are. 

The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride andpretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness ofChrist. Good keen reasoning may help slightly, but so strong is thisvice that if we push it down one place it will come up somewhere else. To men and women everywhere Jesus says, "Come unto me, and I will giveyou rest. " The rest He offers is the rest of meekness, the blessedrelief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease topretend. It will take some courage at first, but the needed grace willcome as we learn that we are sharing this new and easy yoke with thestrong Son of God Himself. He calls it "my yoke, " and He walks at oneend while we walk at the other. 

_Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete withanother for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artlessas a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me forthinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace inbeholding Thee. That Thou mayest answer this prayer I humble myselfbefore Thee. Lay upon me Thy easy yoke of self-forgetfulness thatthrough it I may find rest. Amen. _

X

_The Sacrament of Living_

 Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. --I Cor. 10:31

One of the greatest hindrances to internal peace which the Christianencounters is the common habit of dividing our lives into two areas, thesacred and the secular. As these areas are conceived to exist apart fromeach other and to be morally and spiritually incompatible, and as we arecompelled by the necessities of living to be always crossing back andforth from the one to the other, our inner lives tend to break up sothat we live a divided instead of a unified life. 

Our trouble springs from the fact that we who follow Christ inhabit atonce two worlds, the spiritual and the natural. As children of Adam welive our lives on earth subject to the limitations of the flesh and theweaknesses and ills to which human nature is heir. Merely to live amongmen requires of us years of hard toil and much care and attention to thethings of this world. In sharp contrast to this is our life in theSpirit. There we enjoy another and higher kind of life; we are childrenof God; we possess heavenly status and enjoy intimate fellowship withChrist. 

This tends to divide our total life into two departments. We comeunconsciously to recognize two sets of actions. The first are performedwith a feeling of satisfaction and a firm assurance that they arepleasing to God. These are the sacred acts and they are usually thoughtto be prayer, Bible reading, hymn singing, church attendance and suchother acts as spring directly from faith. They may be known by the factthat they have no direct relation to this world, and would have nomeaning whatever except as faith shows us another world, "an house notmade with hands, eternal in the heavens. "

Over against these sacred acts are the secular ones. They include all ofthe ordinary activities of life which we share with the sons anddaughters of Adam: eating, sleeping, working, looking after the needs ofthe body and performing our dull and prosaic duties here on earth. Thesewe often do reluctantly and with many misgivings, often apologizing toGod for what we consider a waste of time and strength. The upshot ofthis is that we are uneasy most of the time. We go about our commontasks with a feeling of deep frustration, telling ourselves pensivelythat there's a better day coming when we shall slough off this earthlyshell and be bothered no more with the affairs of this world. 

This is the old sacred-secular antithesis. Most Christians are caught inits trap. They cannot get a satisfactory adjustment between the claimsof the two worlds. They try to walk the tight rope between two kingdomsand they find no peace in either. Their strength is reduced, theiroutlook confused and their joy taken from them. 

I believe this state of affairs to be wholly unnecessary. We have gottenourselves on the horns of a dilemma, true enough, but the dilemma is notreal. It is a creature of misunderstanding. The sacred-secularantithesis has no foundation in the New Testament. Without doubt a moreperfect understanding of Christian truth will deliver us from it. 

The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our perfect example, and He knew nodivided life. In the Presence of His Father He lived on earth withoutstrain from babyhood to His death on the cross. God accepted theoffering of His total life, and made no distinction between act and act. "I do always the things that please him, " was His brief summary of Hisown life as it related to the Father. As He moved among men He waspoised and restful. What pressure and suffering He endured grew out ofHis position as the world's sin bearer; they were never the result ofmoral uncertainty or spiritual maladjustment. 

Paul's exhortation to "do all to the glory of God" is more than piousidealism. It is an integral part of the sacred revelation and is to beaccepted as the very Word of Truth. It opens before us the possibilityof making every act of our lives contribute to the glory of God. Lest weshould be too timid to include everything, Paul mentions specificallyeating and drinking. This humble privilege we share with the beasts thatperish. If these lowly animal acts can be so performed as to honor God, then it becomes difficult to conceive of one that cannot. 

That monkish hatred of the body which figures so prominently in theworks of certain early devotional writers is wholly without support inthe Word of God. Common modesty is found in the Sacred Scriptures, it istrue, but never prudery or a false sense of shame. The New Testamentaccepts as a matter of course that in His incarnation our Lord took uponHim a real human body, and no effort is made to steer around thedownright implications of such a fact. He lived in that body here amongmen and never once performed a non-sacred act. His presence in humanflesh sweeps away forever the evil notion that there is about the humanbody something innately offensive to the Deity. God created our bodies, and we do not offend Him by placing the responsibility where itbelongs. He is not ashamed of the work of His own hands. 

Perversion, misuse and abuse of our human powers should give us causeenough to be ashamed. Bodily acts done in sin and contrary to nature cannever honor God. Wherever the human will introduces moral evil we haveno longer our innocent and harmless powers as God made them; we haveinstead an abused and twisted thing which can never bring glory to itsCreator. 

Let us, however, assume that perversion and abuse are not present. Letus think of a Christian believer in whose life the twin wonders ofrepentance and the new birth have been wrought. He is now livingaccording to the will of God as he understands it from the written Word. Of such a one it may be said that every act of his life is or can be astruly sacred as prayer or baptism or the Lord's Supper. To say this isnot to bring all acts down to one dead level; it is rather to lift everyact up into a living kingdom and turn the whole life into a sacrament. If a sacrament is an external expression of an inward grace than we neednot hesitate to accept the above thesis. By one act of consecration ofour total selves to God we can make every subsequent act express thatconsecration. We need no more be ashamed of our body--the fleshlyservant that carries us through life--than Jesus was of the humble beastupon which He rode into Jerusalem. "The Lord hath need of him" may wellapply to our mortal bodies. If Christ dwells in us we may bear about theLord of glory as the little beast did of old and give occasion to themultitudes to cry, "Hosanna in the highest. "

That we _see_ this truth is not enough. If we would escape from thetoils of the sacred-secular dilemma the truth must "run in our blood"and condition the complexion of our thoughts. We must practice living tothe glory of God, actually and determinedly. By meditation upon thistruth, by talking it over with God often in our prayers, by recalling itto our minds frequently as we move about among men, a _sense_ of itswondrous meaning will begin to take hold of us. The old painful dualitywill go down before a restful unity of life. The knowledge that we areall God's, that He has received all and rejected nothing, will unify ourinner lives and make everything sacred to us. 

This is not quite all. Long-held habits do not die easily. It will takeintelligent thought and a great deal of reverent prayer to escapecompletely from the sacred-secular psychology. For instance it may bedifficult for the average Christian to get hold of the idea that hisdaily labors can be performed as acts of worship acceptable to God byJesus Christ. The old antithesis will crop up in the back of his headsometimes to disturb his peace of mind. Nor will that old serpent thedevil take all this lying down. He will be there in the cab or at thedesk or in the field to remind the Christian that he is giving thebetter part of his day to the things of this world and allotting to hisreligious duties only a trifling portion of his time. And unless greatcare is taken this will create confusion and bring discouragement andheaviness of heart. 

We can meet this successfully only by the exercise of an aggressivefaith. We must offer all our acts to God and believe that He acceptsthem. Then hold firmly to that position and keep insisting that everyact of every hour of the day and night be included in the transaction. Keep reminding God in our times of private prayer that we mean every actfor His glory; then supplement those times by a thousand thought-prayersas we go about the job of living. Let us practice the fine art of makingevery work a priestly ministration. Let us believe that God is in allour simple deeds and learn to find Him there. 

A concomitant of the error which we have been discussing is thesacred-secular antithesis as applied to places. It is little short ofastonishing that we can read the New Testament and still believe in theinherent sacredness of places as distinguished from other places. Thiserror is so widespread that one feels all alone when he tries to combatit. It has acted as a kind of dye to color the thinking of religiouspersons and has colored the eyes as well so that it is all butimpossible to detect its fallacy. In the face of every New Testamentteaching to the contrary it has been said and sung throughout thecenturies and accepted as a part of the Christian message, the which itmost surely is not. Only the Quakers, so far as my knowledge goes, havehad the perception to see the error and the courage to expose it. 

Here are the facts as I see them. For four hundred years Israel haddwelt in Egypt, surrounded by the crassest idolatry. By the hand ofMoses they were brought out at last and started toward the land ofpromise. The very idea of holiness had been lost to them. To correctthis, God began at the bottom. He localized Himself in the cloud andfire and later when the tabernacle had been built He dwelt in fierymanifestation in the Holy of Holies. By innumerable distinctions Godtaught Israel the difference between holy and unholy. There were holydays, holy vessels, holy garments. There were washings, sacrifices, offerings of many kinds. By these means Israel learned that _God isholy_. It was this that He was teaching them. Not the holiness of thingsor places, but the holiness of Jehovah was the lesson they must learn. 

Then came the great day when Christ appeared. Immediately He began tosay, "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time--but _I_ sayunto you. " The Old Testament schooling was over. When Christ died on thecross the veil of the temple was rent from top to bottom. The Holy ofHolies was opened to everyone who would enter in faith. Christ's wordswere remembered, "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in thismountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. .. . But the hourcometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Fatherin spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. Godis Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and intruth. "

Shortly after, Paul took up the cry of liberty and declared all meatsclean, every day holy, all places sacred and every act acceptable toGod. The sacredness of times and places, a half-light necessary to theeducation of the race, passed away before the full sun of spiritualworship. 

The essential spirituality of worship remained the possession of theChurch until it was slowly lost with the passing of the years. Then thenatural _legality_ of the fallen hearts of men began to introduce theold distinctions. The Church came to observe again days and seasons andtimes. Certain places were chosen and marked out as holy in a specialsense. Differences were observed between one and another day or place orperson, "The sacraments" were first two, then three, then four untilwith the triumph of Romanism they were fixed at seven. 

In all charity, and with no desire to reflect unkindly upon anyChristian, however misled, I would point out that the Roman Catholicchurch represents today the sacred-secular heresy carried to itslogical conclusion. Its deadliest effect is the complete cleavage itintroduces between religion and life. Its teachers attempt to avoid thissnare by many footnotes and multitudinous explanations, but the mind'sinstinct for logic is too strong. In practical living the cleavage is afact. 

From this bondage reformers and puritans and mystics have labored tofree us. Today the trend in conservative circles is back toward thatbondage again. It is said that a horse after it has been led out of aburning building will sometimes by a strange obstinacy break loose fromits rescuer and dash back into the building again to perish in theflame. By some such stubborn tendency toward error Fundamentalism in ourday is moving back toward spiritual slavery. The observation of days andtimes is becoming more and more prominent among us. "Lent" and "holyweek" and "good" Friday are words heard more and more frequently uponthe lips of gospel Christians. We do not know when we are well off. 

In order that I may be understood and not be misunderstood I would throwinto relief the practical implications of the teaching for which I havebeen arguing, i. E. , the sacramental quality of every day living. Overagainst its positive meanings I should like to point out a few things itdoes not mean. 

It does not mean, for instance, that everything we do is of equalimportance with everything else we do or may do. One act of a goodman's life may differ widely from another in importance. Paul's sewingof tents was not equal to his writing of an Epistle to the Romans, butboth were accepted of God and both were true acts of worship. Certainlyit is more important to lead a soul to Christ than to plant a garden, but the planting of the garden _can_ be as holy an act as the winning ofa soul. 

Again, it does not mean that every man is as useful as every other man. Gifts differ in the body of Christ. A Billy Bray is not to be comparedwith a Luther or a Wesley for sheer usefulness to the Church and to theworld; but the service of the less gifted brother is as pure as that ofthe more gifted, and God accepts both with equal pleasure. 

The "layman" need never think of his humbler task as being inferior tothat of his minister. Let every man abide in the calling wherein he iscalled and his work will be as sacred as the work of the ministry. It isnot what a man does that determines whether his work is sacred orsecular, it is _why_ he does it. The motive is everything. Let a mansanctify the Lord God in his heart and he can thereafter do no commonact. All he does is good and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Forsuch a man, living itself will be sacramental and the whole world asanctuary. His entire life will be a priestly ministration. As heperforms his never so simple task he will hear the voice of the seraphimsaying, "Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth isfull of his glory. "

_Lord, I would trust Thee completely; I would be altogether Thine; Iwould exalt Thee above all. I desire that I may feel no sense ofpossessing anything outside of Thee. I want constantly to be aware ofThy overshadowing Presence and to hear Thy speaking Voice. I long tolive in restful sincerity of heart. I want to live so fully in theSpirit that all my thought may be as sweet incense ascending to Thee andevery act of my life may be an act of worship. Therefore I pray in thewords of Thy great servant of old, "I beseech Thee so for to cleanse theintent of mine heart with the unspeakable gift of Thy grace, that I mayperfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee. " And all this Iconfidently believe Thou wilt grant me through the merits of JesusChrist Thy Son. Amen. _