What Manner of Persons Ought Ye to Be?

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we thank thee this afternoon that we have the privilege of standing upon the ground of redemption, and of asking thee for the very best blessing of heaven.

We thank thee that, like as earthly parents are willing and ready to give good gifts to their children, so thou art willing and ready to give the Holy Ghost. So we pray thee that this may be a day of heart searching; and if there be anything wrong in our lives, O God, show us where the point of weakness is, and help us to make it right. Search us, know us, and see if there be any wicked way in us.

We pray thy blessing upon the ministers gathered here, and the churches they minister unto, and we pray that in consequence of this conference, scores of people will be quickened into new life, and hundreds be saved.

Hear us and answer us, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

SUBJECT — VhAT manner OF PERSONS OUGHT YE TO BE

You find the text this afternoon in II. Pet. 3: 11, “What manner of persons ought ye to be If I should take the text as it stands in its connection, it would be necessary for me to say something to you about the second advent of our Lord, because Peter is speaking here in this epistle of this particular event pertaining to these last days. We are told that in these last days there shall be those who deny the Lord who bought them, and in the opening of this dark picture we find Peter turning to those who were really bought with a price, the precious blood of the Son of God, and he says, “What manner of persons ought ye to be?” It is not my purpose to speak this afternoon of the second advent of the Lord, but to hold up this text of Scripture between the morning’s and evening’s texts, as a call to those who are already God’s children, to live as they ought to live.

Some people say the world is getting better. Well, in some ways it is. In all those things which are good in the world, it is getting better, but those things which are bad are getting worse. Sin and sinning are getting worse every day, and I do not know where you live if you think the world is getting so much better. It seems to me that the darker the picture painted by the world, the brighter ought to be the picture painted by the Christians in the world, because while we are in it, we are not of it.

I think if you will study the Bible, you will find that there is a high ideal presented to us as the children of God. Mr. Meyer says that we have all had visions of what we ought to be, and he says we have never had them but they are a prophecy of the things God would do for us if we would submit ourselves to him. It is not a question of what I am, or what you are, but whether you have submitted to God. The other day, in India, Mr. Meyer gave his lecture on the Holy Ghost, and he used as an illustration something he used in his lecture here. I have heard him give it. In one of his former parishes he established a wood-yard for discharged convicts. He gave each one a saw and a wood-buck, and he found that it kept him busy paying his deficits. He got a circular saw and put the men to turning it, and still he lost money. And then he says he put steam back of the saw, and at once he increased his income. And he said: H can just imagine going out into that

wood-yard and saying to that saw: You are the same old saw; you have the same teeth and metal, and yet you are doing different work. Will you just explain to me where the change is?’” ^AVhy,” says the saw, have a different power; once it was the power of men, and now it is the power of steam.” And so I say, it is not a question as to what we are or have been, but it is the power back of us. Because the power back of us is the power of God, “what manner of persons ought ye to be

Now those who are theologians will say, “Logically that leads to ‘perfection,’ or sinlessuess.” Well, it’ may lead there logically, but it does not scripturally, because we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” 1 hold to the text of the morning, “For to me to live is Christ.” If we are surrendered to him, that is where we may live.. But if your experience is anything like my own, you will hold up the high ideal and the reality, and say of the latter, “What a miserable picture!” But 1 should like to say to you, first, God’s love is not affected by your sin. When I first began to preach, in a little church across the line from the State of Indiana, I shall never forget the first sermon I preached. A woman walked down the aisle with a child most miserably deformed. Not very long after I was called upon to go to this home, for a little child was dead. As I walked along the road wondering what to say, I thought it was, of course, this deformed child, and I wondered what I could say to comfort the mother, for I had had very little comforting to do up to that time; but when I entered the little house, poor as poverty could make it, there in the middle of the room was the little deformed child, and there in the casket was the face of the most beautiful child I have ever seen. I said to the mother, “Would it not have been a good thing if God had taken this child and spared the one in the coffin?” And then she sprang to the center of the room and caught the little one in her arms and said: “I know you mean it well, but if God

had taken her it would have killed me. Why, there is not a day since she was born that she has not been in my arms, and not a night that she isn’t on my heart. I sometimes think her very weakness draws her to me.” And thus it is with my Father; in spite of my sin, he loves me. Then if you have had a hard struggle with sin, as many of us have, remember, second, God always takes your part against sin, if you give him the right to do so.

When I lived in Bichmond, Ind., our home was plaguestricken. We could get no assistance from the outside. First of all, all the good nurses were busy, and secondly, they were

afraid of this fatal disease. Then my mother became nurse, and I remember yet how she went through the room through the long hours of the day and the longer hours of the night, walking to this bed and to that bed, helping each one, and I remember how she saved every child but one, and died herself. This is like Christ; he helps us in the struggle; and I hold to the fact to-day that if we are to have victory over sin we must have it through him. He always takes your part against sin. ‘What manner of persons ought ye to be?’^

Now, I want to submit just two or three thoughts to you: First of all, what manner of persons ought ye to he because ye are redeemed We lose the strength of these things because we say them so often. This carries with it the idea of paying a price, or buying back. ‘If I am an expert in diamonds, I may go into a jewelry store and say, “How much is this diamond?’’ The proprietor says, “Five hundred dollars,” but I answer, “I will give you four hundred,” that is my conception of the value of that diamond. Ho you know what God’s conception of your worth and my worth is?

“Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (I. Pet. 1: 18, 19).

I suppose if I knew you well enough and you knew me, we might form an estimate of one another’s values, but we know God’s estimate of our value to-day. We are redeemed with the blood of his Son.

‘‘So near, so very near to God,

Nearer we could not be;

For in the person of his Son
We are as near as he.

“So dear, so very dear to God,

Dearer we could not be;

For in the person of his Son
We are as dear as he.“

WHAT MANNER OF PERSONS OtlOHT VE TO RE
What manner of persons ought ye to be?’^

Then, in the second place, what manner of persons ought ye to he, because ye are the body of Christ In the epistle to the Colossians we have Christ our head; in Ephesians the church is his body; and in Philippians we find the word ‘rejoice.” This is the experience that comes to every child of God when he realizes that He is his head, and he is His body, and lives Christ. I tell you, friends, we may live in the spirit of the epistle to the Philippians if we realize He is our head, and that he lives in us. Did it ever occur to you that if you have any standing in heaven you must have it in him? And if he has any standing on earth, he must have it in us? What do you suppose men will think of Christ if they have only your life and my life to speak of it?

There used to be a man in Washington at whom people would often look again and again, and then would say, ‘Did you look at his head? Not since the days of Daniel Webster has any man had a head like that.” But they would look again and say, “Do you see his body?” It was a poor, misshapen body. I bring to you the thought that our Head is perfect. They never said anything against him in the days of his humiliation. They said, ‘‘This man was the Son of God,” perfect. And now we have him in glory. But what of the body?

O brethren, let us look at ourselves, and be very honest this afternoon. I have never been called upon as an evangelist to go up and down the country saying mean things about the ministers and the church; and I believe with all my soul that it is time we stopped our criticism of our ministry and our church and prayed for both with all our might. I believe that God’s church in the world will never be better until it begins to be better in our own hearts and then goes out to the pews. Oh, if He is the head, and we are the body, what manner of persons ought we to be?

Then, in the next place, what manner of persons ought ye to be because ye are the betrothed of Jesus Christ? “Ah, no,” you say, ‘Sve are the bride.” There will be a time in the future — I read it in Kevelation — when the marriage supper will occur. So now we are the betrothed of Jesus Christ to-day. Just as a woman guards jealously the name of the man whom she is to marry, you and I ought to guard the name of Jesus Christ. I don’t know how it is with you here in the West, but I know about the East. If there ever was a time when the people ought to pray for the ministers, now is the time. There has never been a day when the minister had to live in such an atmosphere of infidelity as now. He picks up a paper or magazine and sees something that deals with disbelief and doubt. I want to say to those of you in the church, that you can never understand the position of a minister of the gospel, and you need to pray as never before in your life for the men who preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some of you remember that when Major-General O. O. Howard was on the Pacific Coast, some of his friends wanted to honor him by having a reception, and they decided to have it on Wednesday night. It was to be a great affair, and the President had given it his sanction. Then some one said, ‘We had better let him know, so he will be ready on Wednesday evening”; and finally they went and told him, “General, Wednesday night we want to see you on a matter of business.” “Well, gentlemen, you cannot see me on that night; I have a previous engagement.” Finally they said, “It is a reception, and the President of the United States has given it his sanction.” And the old veteran, his eyes flashing, stood up and said, “You know I am a church-member, and I promised the Lord, when I united with his church, that from time to time on Wednesday night I would meet him in prayer-meeting, and there is nothing in this world can make me break that engagement.” They had the reception, but they had it on Thursday night. YTien I was out there, I asked, “Where is the man who has the greatest influence?” And they said, “It is not a minister of the gospel; it is Major-General Howard.”

Oh, that God would help us understand that in the little affairs of our life we hurt him by the little impatient word or the cross look. We are hurting him; we are his betrothed. What manner of persons ought we to he?

The closing word is. What manner of persons ought ye to he, because ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost? I know there are two interpretations. Sometimes it means, am the temple,” and sometimes it means that we are the living stones composing that temple, which is the church, in which dwells the Holy Spirit. God pity the man who does not give the Holy Ghost the proper place in his life! If you are his temple, he wants to come in and fill you, and make all these things pure in his temple. You haven’t peace. He cannot come without filling your soul with peace. If you are impatient, it only shows that you need the Holy Ghost in the temple. “Well,” you say, “you don’t know the trials I have and the temptations that beset me.” Ho; but I know the Lord you have, and we all have that same Lord right at hand when we call upon him.

Two artists competed for a prize. They were to paint a picture illustrating the Christian’s rest. One touched the canvas, and made a tree reflected in the waters of the lake beside which it grew; that was his conception of rest. That is not the Christian’s rest, and the artist did not get the prize. The other painted a little mountain stream rushing on its way to the sea. And there, on a branch of a tree extending out over the foaming stream, was a little bird, lifting up his head and pouring out his little soul in song, utterly unmindful of the rushing stream. That is like the Christian’s rest. “In the world, ye shall have tribulation”; in Him we have peace. If ever I feel I am growing impatient, I just sit still a minute and speak the word “peace,” and a holy calm of heaven settles upon me. If we are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost dwells in us, it is by his power that we shall overcome the weakness in us.

I am told there is a time in the sickness of scarlet fever when the patient sloughs off particles of the cuticle, and then it is that the fever is most contagious, for it is by taking in these germs of the disease that it is contracted; but if carbolic acid is liberally used, when one of these germs moves the carbolic acid meets and kills it. Are you impatient and ill-tempered? Do you say, am determined never to lose my temper again”? Did you ever try it? I have tried it. Once a boy went to his minister and asked him how he could keep from losing his temper, and the minister said, “I will tell you how: Whenever you find yourself losing it, just stop and count up to one hundred.” So he tried it, and he says, was so mad to think I was counting that I lost my temper worse than ever.” I submit, my friends, that the only victory over sin is found in Him, I always shudder when I hear a man talk about his own power over himself. If the Holy Ghost be in you, he will give you peace, constant, full, and complete always. I know very well that you may say the interpretation of that text is “Another Paraclete,” which means One like him, and if the Holy Ghost in me is One like Christ, what ought not my life to be? “I will pray the F ather, and he shall give you another Comforter.” One like unto him! I bless God this afternoon we have a Paraclete whose presence means real sympathy and real, complete victory over sin, and — peace.

The sainted A. J. Gordon tells of a man in Boston whom he met one day, and he said to him, want you to go with me to the burial ground with my child.” He stepped into the carriage, and there on the front seat was the white coffin. They rode away through the city of Boston to the cemetery, but not a word was spoken. They came to the grave, and the father, after carrying the little casket to the place, held it in his arms, and, taking the little key from his pocket, unlocked the casket and raised the lid, and fastened his eyes upon the face of his little one. He said not a word, but looked long and steadily; then he closed the lid, and gave the child into the hands of those at the grave, turned, entered his carriage, and rode back

WHAT MANNER OF PP^RSONS OUGHT YE TO BE

to Boston, never speaking a word. But just as he got out of the carriage he said, with a breaking heart, “She was all I had.” “Poor man,” said Dr. Gordon, “he had not the hope that you and I have.” I donH know whether you have suffered much or not. I have, and I thank God for it, because through the suffering he has given me a better view of himself.

But, with the Holy Ghost in our lives. What manner of persons ought we to be? Let us stand a few minutes in prayer, and let us bow very low before God, and ask him to put his finger upon the thing in our lives that hinders his growth in us.

Let us pray: O Lord God, we want to break with that thing which is standing between us and thee. We want to be atl that thou wantest us to be, our Father. Help us now before this day closes to be right with God. Hear us and answer us in Jesus’ name. Amen.