Chapter 13

GROWTH IN CHRISTLINESS OF LIFE.

MAKING A BOTCH.

One may have a clean, pure heart and yet be far from possessing a matured Christian character. A man may love God with all his heart, and yet not be wise in his selection of the things that will always please God. Frequently the preacher may come down from the pulpit having made a horrible botch of his attempt to serve God in the ministry. He may feel the fact keenly, and be even more conscious of it than any of his hearers. And yet that preacher may have a heart as white as Gabriel's wing and a soul full of love to God and man. But as time goes on, and he lingers repeatedly at the feet of Christ in prayer, God will show him how he can serve Him more effectively and without the objectionable features.

UNJUST CRITICISM.

The fact that purity is not maturity has given rise to misapprehension on the part of many people. Indeed, many of God's dear children have been misjudged and condemned because they did not have in addition to pure hearts sound and solid judgment. As soon as a man professes the blessing of perfect love, the sharp-eyed critics of the neighborhood look out for "perfect sense," and "perfect manners," and "perfect life," and when the subject of observation fails to meet the expectation of the aforesaid critics, there is a great hue and cry that "Sister A. or Brother B. has not got what is professed," when God knows they HAVE got JUST what they profess--namely, perfect love, full salvation. The Lord has never guaranteed a perfect head to any man that breathes. We will make mistakes as long as we hang around this old world, and it is injustice to exalted spirits who have this precious grace, and an insult to the God who gave the grace, to condemn sanctification because those who profess it are not angels, but simply men and women cleansed and filled with the Spirit.

REPEATING MISTAKES.

But while God makes allowance for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. And right along here comes a great expanse of territory which holiness people need to cover. Here there is infinite room for advancement and progress.

"THE IMITATION OF CHRIST"

Thomas A'Kempis wrote a wonderful book on "The Imitation of Christ." The failure in so many quarters in becoming Christlike is due to the false method pursued. First, get a Christlike heart, and then let that heart govern your life and actions. "Work OUT your own salvation," said Paul, "for it is God that worketh IN you." Precisely! God puts a holy heart into a man's breast, and his business from thence on is to bring his life into line with the heart. The old life-habits may cling to him for a time, but it is the business of the sanctified soul to free itself from all that Jesus would not do were He on earth. Imitation of Christ comes after sanctification, and not before. You simply can not imitate Jesus if you have a reptile heart in you. If you have a filthy mind you will talk "smut" and think "smut" in spite of yourself. You may hide your bad self from the world, but your wife, or your husband, or your family, those who are acquainted with you intimately, know that you are base and coarse.

DANTE.

A glutton may stand and look at the thin, austere, ascetic face of Dante and say within himself, "I will be a Dante," but all the world knows that in a few hours he will be gourmandizing as swinishly as before. And men look at the beautiful Jesus held up in Unitarian pulpits and resolve to act like Him, and go right on being selfish, and proud, and deceitful, and devilish. There must be a moral miracle, there must be a spiritual upsetting and overturning, before a carnal heart can begin to imitate the pure and spotless Son of God.

KINDNESS.

After we are sanctified, we ought to imitate Christ in kindness. How kind He was! Where did He abuse anyone? He preached the truth, but He never maligned any of His auditors.

THE "LITTLE THINGS"

It is the "little things" that make up the mosaic of life. Our friends know us, not by the speeches we deliver, nor the sermons we preach, nor the books we write, but by the tones of our voices, and the letters we pen, and the words we use in daily life. Introduce kindness into a discordant family and how Eden-like the home becomes! Why are we not as considerate and polite to those who are all the world to us as we are to strangers and neighbors? Christlike kindness would fill our hearts with thoughtfulness for those about us. It would bid us carry a torch to many a darkened life, and incite us to share the burden pressing upon many an aching shoulder.

TRUE HUMILITY.

Christ had great charity for the faults of those with whom He was associated. How He bore with the dull and almost stupid disciples! How He bears with us in our worse and more inexcusable blockheadedness! And, if He is so charitable and patient with our faults, how ought we to be with others? There comes a time in our lives when we are simply astonished that people pay any attention to us at all. We are so conscious of our short-comings, and so keenly aware of our mistakes, that it seems to us that surely no one is quite so blundering and fallible as we are. How easy it is then to bear with one another!

LOOKING-GLASS HUMILITY.

We ought to work humility out into our lives. Jesus lived an humble life--a life of the truest and deepest humility. Not a humility conscious of itself and ever gazing at itself through the fancied eyes of others, but a humility that was real and unaffected.

A CHRISTLIKE MAN.

The writer has in mind a man of deep and earnest piety, a scholar, a successful preacher and author. With all his learning and scholarship he is as humble as a child, and one can not look at him without feeling, "There is a Christ-man." Often as the pen flies quickly across the page, or as the lips are moving in the delivery of a sermon, or as an altar service is in progress, the slight, thin figure of that man flashes to the brain, and the eye grows dim and the heart-prayer rises, "Lord, make me an humble man." There are so many great men, eloquent men, learned men, dignified men, but so few humble men. God, increase their number in the land!

ACTIVITY.

Another thing in Jesus' life which sanctified people ought to learn to imitate was His activity. His days, and even His nights, frequently, were filled with service. After long days of teaching and preaching, He would seek out some quiet nook and spend the still and lonely hours of night in prayer to the Father.

THE INDIVIDUAL VISION.

Men who come into close touch and communion with Christ are impelled irresistibly to earnest and ceaseless service. They see needs which no one else seems to see. They hear the plaintive voices of dying men, and the tearful cries of despondent women, and the helpless moans of unloved children. They have visions which others never understand, and dream of things with which their dearest friends can not sympathize. They have given their all that they may know Christ, and He has rewarded them by disclosing His heart to them. They know why His face is tearful, and His voice is filled with sadness. They know why He is "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." They are baptized into a baptism of love for souls, and compassion for the sorrowing, similar to that in which He is plunged. It is for this reason that men hear the voice of God calling them away from the hearth-stone out into the desolate earth.

ST. TELEMACHUS.

St. Telemachus heard the voice of God, and straightway "followed the sphere of westward wheeling stars," and journeyed on to Rome muttering, "The call of God! The call of God!" Not on a foolish errand did he go, for, after his visit to the Eternal City, gladiatorial combats ceased.

"HE THAT WARRETH"

Brethren, be true to Christ. Let not even those who love you best draw you from a steadfast purpose to spend your life and all for the Galilean. Flee ease and luxury and comfort, and impose hard tasks upon yourselves. Your friends may seek to hinder you with cries of, "Rest! Tarry!" but like Christian in Bunyan's dream stop your ears and go quickly on your journey.

THE HOME COMING.

Some day your little service will be complete. Your sun will set. The west will be filled with beauty, and the birds will twitter softly in the trees as you trudge the last mile into the City; and as the shades deepen, and the air grows chill, the Master Himself will meet you, take you to His heart, wipe the tear from your cheek, the dust of the road from your brow, and the sorrow from your heart, and lead you to the court, where with those whom you love, and those who love you, Eternity will be spent in the light of His pure and shining face.

EXPERIENCE

THE VALUE OF TESTIMONY.

It has pleased God to place in our hands two weapons by which we are to overcome Satan--"the blood of the Lamb, and the word of our testimony." It was the narrated experiences of the people of God, and the modest declarations of the saving power of Christ, which convicted me of my need and led me to seek the grace of God. Very briefly, therefore, I will sketch God's dealings with my own soul.

EARLY PRAYER.

I was born September 30th, 1877, at Westfield, Indiana. My parents were both ministers in the Society of Friends, and I can not remember When I first began to pray, for my mother taught me to go to God with everything, even when a very small child. When I was five and a half years of age we moved to Walnut Ridge, Indiana, where there was a Friends' meeting of more than ordinary size and activity. It was here that my conversion took place. I remember the event as distinctly as if it were yesterday.

CONVICTION.

I always prayed at the family altar, and that was an institution which was never neglected for anything in our home, and I had never omitted my evening devotions; but one summer day while playing by myself under the trees in the front yard, a great fear came upon me lest I had never had a change of heart. Though less than six years old, I had sat in the "gallery" behind my father as he preached too often to be ignorant of the necessity of the new birth. It was a perfect day, but conviction settled upon me more and more deeply, and a dark shadow seemed to take the brightness from everything. Unable to endure the heartache any longer, I ran into the house and sat down with my father and mother, waiting in silence for some time. Finally I asked them if I had "ever been converted," told them I "wanted to be," and immediately we knelt in prayer. How I did weep, and how badly I felt! I can see the back of that little sewing-rocker now swimming in my tears. (I wonder where that rocking-chair is now! The last I knew it was in California, having left us at an auction--an occasion not unfamiliar to most of preacher-families.) They told me to pray, and I prayed with all my heart. If ever there was a little boy who felt that he was a great sinner, I was the boy. I remembered all the things I ever did that I knew were wrong. My boyish wickednesses, things that seem a rather absurd lot now in the light of the sins of the average lad of six that I know to-day, caused me great pain. Soon peace came, and what happiness! When I went out doors again the very birds twittered with increased gladness, and the sky seemed a far deeper blue, and the grass and flowers rejoiced with me in my new-found experience.

RETROGRESSION.

Would God I had retained my simple faith in Jesus! But it was not long before I wandered away from Christ, and the life of prayerfulness and obedience. For years my religious experience was most unsatisfactory. I was under frequent convictions, and knew that the Spirit was striving with me persistently, but I hardened my heart and would not yield completely to God. As I look back at those years of restlessness and rebellion, I recall with gratitude the forbearance and long-suffering of a now sainted mother. How she carried her proud, stubborn boy on her heart, and how she held onto God's skirt and tugged away until He answered.

THE STRIVING OF THE SPIRIT.

During the winter of 1891-1892 I became almost wretched on account of conviction. The Holy Ghost fairly dogged my steps and whispered in my ear at every turn. There were many things which He used to convict me of--my unfaithfulness and aridity of soul and life. My junior year at Oak Grove Seminary is distinctly remembered as a time of continuous conviction and unrest. Now and then I would find peace and comfort for a time, but they remained only for a time. I kept up secret devotions very carefully. I never missed my daily prayers, but my life was inconsistent and God-dishonoring. The lives of real Christians rebuked me, and the mockery of my empty profession haunted me like a spectre.

RECLAMATION.

In the summer of 1892 I began to seek God earnestly, and was not long in finding pardon and reclamation. No sooner was I at peace with God than I began to hunger for holiness. O, how my heart longed for full salvation! I saw much about me that was an indication that there was an experience enjoyed by some of which I was not possessed. My mother's calm, victorious life, and her constant unwavering Christian faith, convicted me. I was proud and selfish, and hypersensitive and ambitious. She was restful, contented, loving, meek. How frequently I gave way to some temptation, and how mortified I was to be so humiliated by the Adversary.

HUNGER FOR HOLINESS.

Many of the members of my father's church at Portsmouth had an experience of freedom and liberty which I craved. In July my father, my mother, and I spent a couple of days at Douglas camp-meeting. I remember so well every incident of the trip--my deep unrest as we entered the grounds, my aversion to certain "boisterous persons" who said "Bless the Lord" so frequently, my disrelish for food, my dislike of taking a front seat in the audience. Two old sisters sat facing the preacher one evening. Their faces were full of joy, and they seemed to overflow with joy and spiritual exhilaration. I inwardly said, "I wish I had an experience like they seem to have." I made up my mind I would seek. I can not recall a word of the sermon. I do not think I heard it at the time--my mind was so full of an inward struggle.

CANDIDATE FOR SANCTIFICATION.

When the call was made, I went forward and consecrated myself and all my hopes and desires and longings and all to God. How in the world I had ever acquired so low a desire I do not know, but my chief ambition had been to be a professor of science in some college. But the Lord put me through a series of questions:

"Will you be my property henceforth?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Are you willing that people should call you a 'holiness crank'?"

"Yes, Lord."

"Supposing I should ask you to shout, would you?"

"I would do my best at it."

"Will you give up all your plans and be a one-horse preacher of holiness if I want you to?"

Ah, here was a rub, indeed. Preaching was precisely what I did not relish. Anything rather than that. I had visions of small salaries, and country churches, and long, cold rides. I had seen the life of the preacher ever since I could remember. I debated the question. Then I answered, "Yes." The audience was singing:

"Here I give my all to Thee-- Friends and time and earthly store. Soul and body then to be Wholly Thine forever more."

They told us seekers to raise our hands if we meant it. I meant it, so up went a hand. Instantly faith got an answer, and the witness came, and I knew that I was sanctified wholly.

A DULL SCHOLAR

But I was a dull scholar, and had to learn many lessons after my Jordan-crossing. Owing to my failure in definite testimony, my experience suffered partial eclipse, and my last year at Oak Grove was more or less dark and unhappy. I was much helped, however, by the reading of holiness books sent me by a sanctified music-teacher, who had interest enough in me to write me real Fenelon letters and keep me supplied with holiness reading. During the summer of 1893 I was more fully established in the grace, and in the autumn began to preach.

THE ABIDING CHRIST.

I have frequently erred in judgment, and made most stupid blunders, but the perpetual spring experience of full salvation has been my greatest comfort and blessing. The abiding Christ gives zest and spice to life, and makes the ministry of holiness delightful and joyous.

GOD ALWAYS ANSWERS.

God has blessed my ministry, and given me success. It is all of Him. What a wonderful God we have! He never leaves us. I have called upon Him when preaching, and He has always answered. I have cried to Him in hours of loneliness and discouragement, and He has replied like a flash. I stood by a cot and watched a saintly mother slip away to the "undiscovered bourn," and He did not fail me. Hallelujah! He can not only sanctify, but He can preserve, sustain and keep. Whatever may come to us, Christ will not forsake us. As we look down the vista of years to come, and remember that life is swift and serious, we can only lean hard on the Son of God and push on, confident that His promise, "Lo, I am with you alway," can not fail. Praise the Lord!

THE END.