Chapter 4

to which should be the greatest, and when the supreme test came they all forsook Him and fled. Certainly, they were not only afflicted with darkness in their heads, but, far worse, carnality in their hearts; they were His, and they were very dear to Him, but they were not yet holy, they were yet impure of heart.

Paul makes this point very clear in his Epistle to the Corinthians. He tells them plainly that they were yet only babes in Christ, because they were carnal and contentious (I Cor. iii. I). They were in Christ, they had been converted, but they were not holy.

It is of great importance that we keep this truth well in mind that men may be truly converted, may be babes in Christ, and yet not be pure in heart; we shall then sympathise more fully with them, and see the more clearly how to help them and guide their feet into the way of holiness and peace.

Those who hold that we are sanctified wholly in conversion will meet with much to perplex them in their converts, and are not intelligently equipped to bless and help God's little children.

4. A continued study of God's teaching on this subject will clearly reveal to us that purity of heart is obtained after we are converted. Peter makes this very plain in his address to the Council in Jerusalem, where he recounts the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon Cornelius and his household. After mentioning the gift of the Holy Ghost, he adds, "and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith" (Acts xv. 9). Among other things, then, the baptism of the Holy Ghost purifies the heart; but the disciples were converted before they received this Pentecostal experience, so we see that heart purity, or holiness, is a work wrought in us after conversion.

Again, we notice that Peter says, "purifying their hearts by faith." If it is by faith, then it is not by growth, nor by works, nor by death, nor by purgatory after death. It is God's work. He purifies the heart, and He does it for those, and only those who, devoting all their possessions and powers to Him, seek Him by simple, prayerful, obedient, expectant, unwavering faith through His Son our Saviour.

Unless we grasp these truths, and hold them firmly, we shall not be able to "rightly divide the word of truth," we shall hardly be "workmen that need not be ashamed, approved unto God" (2 Tim. ii. 15). Some one has written that "the searcher in science knows that if he but stumble in his hypothesis--that if he but let himself be betrayed into prejudice or undue leaning toward a pet theory, or anything but absolute uprightness of mind--his whole work will be stultified and he will fail ignominiously. To get anywhere in science he must follow truth with absolute rectitude."

THE HOLY SPIRIT.

And is there not a science of salvation, of holiness, of eternal life, that requires the same absolute loyalty to "the Spirit of Truth"? How infinitely important, then, that we know what that truth is, that we may understand and hold that doctrine.

A friend of mine who finished his course with joy, and was called into the presence of his Lord to receive his crown some time ago, has pointed out some mistakes which we must carefully avoid. Here they are:--

"It is a great mistake to substitute repentance for Bible consecration. The people whom Paul exhorted to full sanctification were those who had turned from their idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His Son sent down from Heaven (I Thess. i. 9, 10; iii. 10-13; v. 23).

"Only people who are citizens of His kingdom can claim His sanctifying power. Those who still have idols to renounce may be candidates for conversion, but not for the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire.

"It is a mistake in consecration to suppose that the person making it has anything of his own to give. We are not our own, but we are bought with a price, and consecration is simply taking our hands off from God's property. To wilfully withhold anything from God is to be a God-robber.

"It is a mistake to substitute a mere mental assent to God's proprietorship and right to all we have, while withholding complete devotion to Him. This is theoretical consecration--a rock on which we fear multitudes are being wrecked. Consecration which does not embrace the crucifixion of self and the funeral of all false ambitions is not the kind which will bring the Holy Fire. A consecration is imperfect which does not embrace the speaking faculty" (the tongue), "and the believing faculty" (the heart), "the imagination, and every power of mind, soul, and body, and give all absolutely and for ever into the hands of Jesus, turning a deaf ear to every opposing voice.

"Reader, have you made such a consecration as this? It must embrace all this, or it will prove a bed of quicksand to sink your soul, instead of a full salvation balloon, which will safely bear you above the fog and malaria and turmoil of the world, where you can triumphantly sing:

"'I rise to float in realms of light, Above the world and sin. With heart made pure and garments white, And Christ enthroned within.'

"It is a mistake to teach seekers to 'only believe,' without complete abandonment to God at every point, for they can no more do it than an anchored ship can sail.

"It is a mistake to substitute mere verbal assent for obedient trust. 'Only believe' is a fatal snare to all who fall into these traps.

"It is a mistake to believe that the altar sanctifies the gift without the assurance that all is on the altar. If even the end of your tongue, or one cent of your money, or a straw's weight of false ambition, or spirit of dictation, or one ounce of your reputation, or will, or believing powers be left off the altar, you can no more believe than a bird without wings can fly.

"'Only believe' is only for those seekers of holiness who are truly converted, fully consecrated, and crucified to everything but the whole will of God. Teachers who apply this to people who have not yet reached these stations need themselves to be taught. All who have reached them may believe, and if they do believe, may look God in the face, and triumphantly sing:

"'The blood, the blood is all my plea, Hallelujah, for it cleanseth me.'"

II. _The Experience_.--Simply to be skilled in the doctrine is not sufficient for us as leaders. We may be as orthodox as St. Paul himself, and yet be only as "sounding brass and clanging cymbals," unless we are rooted in the blessed experience of holiness. If we would save ourselves and them that follow us, if we would make havoc of the Devil's kingdom and build up God's kingdom, we must not only know and preach the truth, but we must be living examples of the saving and sanctifying power of the truth. We are to be "living epistles, known and read of all men"; we must be able to say with Paul, "follow me as I follow Christ"; and "those things which ye learned and received and heard and saw in me, do; and the God of peace shall be with you."

We must not forget that--

1. We are ourselves simple Christians, individual souls struggling for eternal life and liberty, and we must by all means save ourselves. To this end we must be holy, else we shall at last experience the awful woe of those who, having preached to others, are yet themselves castaways.

2. We are leaders upon whom multitudes depend. It is a joy and an honour to be a leader, but it is also a grave responsibility. James says: "We shall receive the heavier judgment" (James iii. i, R.V.). How unspeakable shall be our blessedness, and how vast our reward, if, wise in the doctrine, and rich and strong and clean in the experience of holiness, we lead our people into their full heritage in Jesus! But how terrible shall be our condemnation, and how great our loss, if, in spiritual slothfulness and unbelief, we stop short of the experience ourselves and leave them to perish for want of the gushing waters and heavenly food and Divine direction we should have brought them! We need the experience for ourselves, and we need it for our work and for our people.

What the roof is to a house, that the doctrine is to our system of truth. It completes it. What sound and robust health is to our bodies, that the experience is to our souls. It makes us every whit whole, and fits us for all duty. Sweep away the doctrine, and the experience will soon be lost. Lose the experience, and the doctrine will surely be neglected, if not attacked and denied. No man can have the heart, even if he has the head, to fully and faithfully and constantly preach the doctrine unless he has the experience.

Spiritual things are spiritually discerned, and as this doctrine deals with the deepest things of the Spirit, it is only clearly understood and is best recommended, explained, defended, and enforced by those who have the experience.

Without the experience, the presentation of the doctrine will be faulty and cold and lifeless, or weak and vacillating, or harsh and sharp and severe. With the experience, the preaching of the doctrine will be with great joy and assurance, and will be strong and searching, but at the same time warm and persuasive and tender.

I shall never forget the shock of mingled surprise and amusement and grief with which I heard a Captain loudly announce in one of my meetings many years ago that he was "going to preach holiness now," and his people "have to get it," if he had to "ram it down their throats." Poor fellow! He did not possess the experience himself, and never pressed into it and soon forsook his people.

A man in the clear experience of the blessing will never think of "ramming" it down people; but will, with much secret prayer, constant meditation and study, patient instruction, faithful warning, loving persuasion, and burning, joyful testimony, seek to lead them into that entire and glad consecration and that fullness of faith that never fail to receive the blessing.

Again, the most accurate and complete knowledge of the doctrine, and the fullest possession of the experience, will fail us at last unless we carefully guard ourselves at several points, and unless we watch and pray.

3. We must not judge ourselves so much by our feelings as by our volitions. It is not my feelings, but the purpose of my heart, the attitude of my will, that God looks at, and it is that to which I must look. "If our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God." A friend of mine who had firmly grasped this thought, and walked continually with God, used to testify: "I am just as good when I don't feel good as when I do feel good." Another mighty man of God said that all the feeling he needed to enable him to trust God was the consciousness that he was fully submitted to all the known will of God.

We must not forget that the Devil is "the accuser of the brethren" (Rev. xii. 10), and that he seeks to turn our eyes away from Jesus, who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the conies, and build our nest in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. Hallelujah!

4. We must not divorce conduct from character, or works from faith. Our lives must square with our teaching. We must live what we preach. We must not suppose that faith in Jesus excuses us from patient, faithful, laborious service. We must "live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; that is, we must fashion our lives, our conduct, our conversation by the principles laid down in His word, remembering His searching saying, "Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heaven."

This subject of faith and works is very fully discussed by James (chap. ii. 14-26), and Paul is very clear in his teaching that, while God saves us not by our works, but by His mercy through faith, yet it is that we may "maintain good work" (Titus iii. 14); and "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Eph. ii. 8-10).

Faith must "work by love," and emotion must be transmitted into action, and joy must lead to work, and love to faithful, self-sacrificing service, else they become a kind of pleasant and respectable, but none the less deadly, debauchery, and at last ruin us.

5. However blessed and satisfactory our present experience may be, we must not rest in it, but remember that our Lord has yet many things to say unto us, as we are able to receive them. We must stir up the gift of God that is in us, and say with Paul, "One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward" (as a racer) "to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. iii. 13, 14, R.V.). It is at this point that many fail. They seek the Lord, they weep and struggle and pray, and then they believe; but, instead of pressing on, they sit down to enjoy the blessing, and, lo! it is not. The children of Israel must needs follow the pillar of cloud and fire. It made no difference when it moved--by day or by night, they followed; and when the Comforter comes we must follow, if we would abide in Him and be filled with all the fullness of God. And, Oh, the joy of following Him!

Finally, if we have the blessing--not the harsh, narrow, unprogressive exclusiveness which often calls itself by the sweet, heavenly term of holiness, but the vigorous, courageous, self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect love--we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it was said, "Each one resembled the children of a king."

"HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED?"

XXIII.

VICTORY OVER EVIL TEMPER BY THE POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

"Ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

Two letters recently reached me, one from Oregon, and one from Massachusetts, inquiring if I thought it possible to have temper destroyed. The comrade from Oregon wrote: "I have been wondering if the statement is correct when one says, 'My temper is all taken away.' Do you think the temper is destroyed or sanctified? It seems to me that if one's temper were actually gone he would not be good for anything."

The comrade from Massachusetts wrote: "Two of our Corps Cadets have had the question put to them: 'Is it possible to have all temper taken out of our hearts?' One claims it is possible. The other holds that the temper is not taken out, but God gives power to overcome it."

Evidently these are questions that perplex many people, and yet the answer seems to me simple.

Temper, _as usually spoken of_, is not a faculty or power of the soul, but is rather an irregular, passionate, violent expression of selfishness. When selfishness is destroyed by love, by the incoming of the Holy Spirit, revealing Jesus to us as an uttermost Saviour, and creating within us a clean heart, of course such evil temper is gone, just as the friction and consequent wear and heat of two wheels is gone when the cogs are perfectly adjusted to each other. The wheels are far better off without friction, and just so man is far better off without such temper.

We do not destroy the wheels to get rid of the friction, but we readjust them; that is, we put them into just or right relations to each other, and then noiselessly and perfectly they do their work. So, strictly speaking, sanctification does not destroy self, but it destroys selfishness--the abnormal and mean and disordered manifestation and assertion of self. I myself am to be sanctified, rectified, purified, brought into harmony with God's will as revealed in His word, and united to Him in Jesus, so that His life of holiness and love flows continually through all the avenues of my being, as the sap of the vine flows through all parts of the branch. "I am the Vine, ye are the branches," said Jesus.

When a man is thus filled with the Holy Spirit he is not made into a putty man, a jelly fish, with all powers of resistance taken out of him; he does not have any less force and "push" and "go" than before, but rather more, for all his natural energy is now reinforced by the Holy Spirit, and turned into channels of love and peace instead of hate and strife.

He may still feel indignation in the presence of wrong, but it will not be rash, violent, explosive, and selfish, as before he was sanctified, but calm and orderly, and holy, and determined, like that of God. It will be the wholesome, natural antagonism of holiness and righteousness to all unrighteousness and evil.

Such a man will feel it when he is wronged, but it will be much in the same way that he feels when others are wronged. The personal, selfish element will be absent. At the same time there will be pity and compassion and yearning love for the wrong-doer and a greater desire to see him saved than to see him punished.

A sanctified man was walking down the street the other day with his wife, when a filthy fellow on a passing wagon insulted her with foul words. Instantly the temptation came to the man to want to get hold of him and punish him, but as instantly the indwelling Comforter whispered, "If ye will forgive men their trespasses;" and instantly the clean heart of the man responded, "I will, I do forgive him, Lord;" and instead of anger a great love filled his soul, and instead of hurling a brick or hot words at the poor Devil-deceived sinner, he sent a prayer to God in Heaven for him. There was no friction in his soul. He was perfectly adjusted to his Lord; his heart was perfectly responsive to his Master's word, and he could rightly say, "My temper is gone."

A man must have his spiritual eyes wide open to discern the difference between sinful temper and righteous indignation.

Many a man wrongs and robs himself by calling his fits of temper "righteous indignation;" while, on the other hand, there is here and there a timid soul who is so afraid of sinning through temper as to suppress the wholesome antagonism that righteousness, to be healthy and perfect, must express towards all unrighteousness and sin.

It takes the keen-edged word of God, applied by the Holy Spirit, to cut away unholy temper without destroying righteous antagonism; to enable a man to hate and fight sin with spiritual weapons (2 Cor. x. 3-5), while pitying and loving the sinner; to so fill him with the mind of Jesus that he will feel as badly over a wrong done to a stranger as though it were done to himself; to help him to put away the personal feeling and be as calm and unselfish and judicial in opposing wrong as is the judge upon the bench. Into this state of heart and mind is one brought who is entirely sanctified by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Hallelujah!

Dr. Asa Mahan, the friend and co-worker of Finney, had a quick and violent temper in his youth and young manhood; but one day he believed, and God sanctified him, and for fifty years he said he never felt but one uprising of temper, and that was but for an instant, about five years after he received the blessing. For the following forty-five years, though subjected to many trials and provocations, he felt only love and peace and patience and good-will in his heart.

A Christian woman was confined to her bed for years with nervous and other troubles, and was very cross and touchy and petulant. At last she became convinced that the Lord had a better experience for her, and she began to pray for a clean heart full of patient, holy, humble love; and she prayed so earnestly, so violently, that her family became alarmed lest she should wear her poor, frail body out in her struggle for spiritual freedom. But she told them she was determined to have the blessing, if it cost her her life, and so she continued to pray, until one glad, sweet day the Comforter came; her heart was purified, and from that day forth, in spite of the fact that she was still a nervous invalid, suffering constant pain, she never showed the least sign of temper or impatience, but was full of meekness, and patient, joyous thankfulness.

"Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the chords with might-- Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight."

Such is the experience of one in whom Jesus lives without a rival, and in whom grace has wrought its perfect work.

"No form of vice, not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society than evil temper," says a distinguished and thoughtful writer.

If this be true, it must be God's will that we be saved from it. And it is provided for in the uttermost salvation that Jesus offers.

Do you want this blessing, my brother, my sister? If so, be sure of this: God has not begotten such a desire in your heart to mock you; you may have it. God is able to do even this for you. With man it is impossible, but not with God. Look at Him just now for it. It is His work, His gift. Look at your past failures, and acknowledge them; look at your present and future difficulties, count them up and face them every one, and admit that they are more than you can hope to conquer; but then look at the dying Son of God, your Saviour--the Man with the seamless robe, the crown of thorns, and the nail-prints; look at the fountain of His Blood; look at His word; look at the Almighty Holy Ghost, who will dwell within you, if you but trust and obey, and cry out: "It shall be done! The mountain shall become a plain; the impossible shall become possible. Hallelujah!" Quietly, intelligently, abandon yourself to the Holy Spirit just now in simple, glad, obedient faith, and the blessing shall be yours. Glory to God!

"HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED?"

End of Project Gutenberg's When the Holy Ghost is Come, by S. L. Brengle