The Spiritual Life from a Personal Point of View

[Ar the urgent request of many friends I reprint the following short sketch of youthful spiritual experience. It was given near the time of the delivery of the lectures on the Priesthood of Christ, and seemed to be useful in vivifying some points in the argument. It has been thought that its appearance in this place may do good, and therefore I yield, though with some reluctance, on account of the great difference of style between the discussion of the Priesthood and this hastily - written personal memorandum.

I HAVE been thinking much lately whether it is not possible to help you in your religious life by giving you a plain account of my own life in Christ, as to how it began and how it has grown. Of course there are many difficulties in doing a thing of this kind; still, if it is done in the right spirit, it ought to be useful to many, and in this hope I will frankly tell you what I can about my “life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

It may strike you as a singular thing that in civilised countries especially a man’s religion is laid up for him in books and churches, and he is expected to come into religious faith as by a kind of inheritance. There it is, and he must take it, or be an infidel! There is the Bible, there is the Church, there is the generally-accepted faith; these must be taken just as they are, or the social consequences will be serious. At first sight this seems to be rather hard; seems, indeed, to be the kind of thing to awaken, not exactly resentment perhaps, but dislike, and probably some degree of suspicion. I reasoned about this a good deal, not in the way that I would now reason about it, but still with much uneasiness and anxiety. I soon saw, however, that if the suggestion tells against religion, it tells at least equally against everything else in civilised life. Science is laid up in books and in various authorities; so 1s geometry, so is medicine, so is architecture, and so are the customs and laws of society. It is quite true that all these admit of expansion and improvement, and new methods of application; but that is no argument against the mere treasuring up and endorsement of what is already felt or thought to be true. I suppose if any man can give a deeper and clearer account of things not seen than is given in the Bible there is no law against his doing so. If any man can live a nobler, purer, higher life than Christ lived he is at liberty to live it. It must not be supposed that the Bible forbids any man to know more about God than it can show him; but the man has yet to be found who can give equal light, with equal conscience and sense of responsibility, with the Bible. Many may have pretended to do so, but where now are their dreams and fancies and vavaries? If any man can make a brighter sun than the one which shines in the heavens, let him do so! If any man, by taking thought, can add a cubit to his stature, let him add it! I soon found, therefore, that the most sensible thing to do was to study the Bible thoroughly with a view of getting at the whole of its meaning and purpose, as far as possible. If every man was left to get up his own system of astronomy, geology, medicine, and architecture, things would go along but slowly; the Bible was, at all

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events, something to begin with, and in this light I was content to regard it in the first instance.

Then came this question: I have a life to live: What am TI going to do with it? Is it to be frittered away in wastefulness of time and unconcern about all serious things, or is it to be moved by high motives to noble service? How are such motives excited, guided, sustained? I knew well enough how easy it was to live an empty and useless life, but something which I could not define told me that, apart altogether from considerations strictly religious, it was desirable to have a high standard of life, and wise to build up a strong and beneficent character. Then I read the life of Christ night and day, and hid His wonderful words in my heart. I was made to feel that if sin was not more awful than I had any power to imagine it to be, Christ would never have been where and what He was. Then I saw the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the unspeakable love of Jesus, and I cast myself upon the Son of God as my only hope and strength and defence. I cannot explain all this in words. I only know that my heart was led to give up all trust in itself, and to go to Christ as the only One that could give me new and heavenly life. The peace that came into my heart after this act can never be made clear to those who have not felt it and known it for themselves — truly it was “peace that passeth understanding,” and it filled me with “joy unspeakable.” In those first days of new life, how much I enjoyed the privilege of prayer! I would steal away to some far-off field and there spend the whole day in repeating aloud the words of Christ, and in praying mightily and fervently hour after hour. This was no merely intellectual effort; it was such a going out of the hungry and eager heart towards the Divine and Eternal as showed me the meaning of the words, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with atL” — — — Oh sweet, beyond honey and the honeycomb, are the memories of those boyish days. I saw heaven opened. I seem to have had given to me the key which opens other and better worlds, and to have been filled with sympathy, with all that is spiritual and pure. I would God these days could come again with all their spring light and tender blossoming. Since then I have undergone doubts and struggles and manifold disappointments and discipline that has searched the heart through and through; perhaps I am in some respects the better for all this, still I often long for the vernal time of childlike Faith and Sunny Hope.

You are not to suppose that it 1s always easy to throw the heart’s trust on Christ and to leave all sin and fear. Far from it. It is easier to some than to others, but God is the help of all. You should think of Faith as an act, if you cannot think so clearly about it in any other light; it is something done; it is the heart giving itself away — perhaps with sighing and many tears because of doubt and inward conflict — to Christ, the Son of God, only-begotten and eternal in grace. “Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.” As if there were a strong wish to go, and yet something tugging at the heart to keep it back from Christ. I know well what this is. Perhaps few men know it better. I feel that I could sin with both hands earnestly, and that few could be mightier in doing evil work; yet I also feel a powerful constraint Christward, as if the Cross could never cease to hold me by an omnipotent fascination. This makes one’s life double, and plagues it with continual difficulty; an experience which Paul states with frightful vividness in the 7th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans.

Perhaps you will say it was easy for me to go to Christ and to put myself in His keeping. Well, there is a sense in which that is true; and yet there is another sense in which there is no truth init. I own that I never could hye Personal Raa of View. 275

read the words of Jesus without my heart going out to Him in great bursts of really tender love; the Prodigal Son, for instance, always holds me like a cable when I would drift away, and that infinitely pathetic story about Christ and the woman that was “a sinner,’ in Simeon’s house, would, I think, recover me of any plague of unbelief with which the devil can afflict my soul, Don’t mistake this for a merely romantic or poetical admiration incident to boyish days — it was nothing of the kind; it was downright love: simple, pure, bounding, youthful love; and, thank God, it is stronger to-day than ever! When I get dazed and weary with discussions and speculations and controversies of all sorts, if I take my New Testament and read about the Prodigal and the Woman I say, “Oh why did I ever doubt this dear Christ, this Son of the Father, whose words are so deep, so tender, and so full of hope for the very worst of us?” And then the tears come, and the oath of renewed love, and the prayer of dedication made afresh. Saviour, do not let me stray! Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee, Yes, that is true. Grieve Him I do every day by neglect, by impatience, by doubt, by folly; still, right away down in the deepest heart, I love Him with unspeakable tenderness.

Do you suppose, then, that I can understand and explain all the sacred mysteries that are gathered up in the name of Christ? That is what no man may ever hope to do. There is no occasion to do it. Certainly there is no need to be in any hurry about it. Eternity will be too short to exhaust that theme: why should we crowd it into the short day of beclouded and stormy time? But there is a danger here which you must avoid — the danger of thinking that a theory about Christ is equal to having Christ dwelling and ruling in the heart. Take the Atonement as an example of what I mean. One able man will tell you that the Atonement means such and such things, and another man equally able will tell you that it means something very different. When you have heard their two statements you may say, “Now, how can I tell which is right? I am not skilled in such matters, and both the men appear to be equally learned?” So they are, and they are both equally good and sincere; but you must remember that you are to be saved by Christ and not by people’s theorves about Him. ‘The probability is that both the men are right; that is to say, that there is a vital point upon which they are substantially one, and that all the different colours are needed to make up the white light of truth, Let me, then, urge you to keep clear of all mere notions in the first place; fix your heart upon Christ — the living, loving, teaching Christ — who offers to save you from your sin, and tell Him frankly that you sive yourself into His keeping, and that you ask Him to show Himself to you more and more.

The fault which I committed is one which you are very - likely to repeat. I wanted to know too much about Christ all at once. I wanted to be a theologian before I was a Christian; to be able to answer all sorts of questions, and to clear up every difficulty. Now this will never do. It is lke wanting to know all about the sun before you will draw the blind up to let the light in. What would you think of a man who would take an organ to pieces to see where the music came from? Yet it is just so that some people treat Jesus Christ. They analyse and discuss and speculate, instead of flying, out of their own insufficiency, into the heart and the arms of the Saviour. At last I said to Jesus, “Lord, I know nothing, I can explain nothing; I am sinful and weak and poor, and I want the rest which Thou hast to give.” <A/fter that came thought and learning and progess, — work after that, not before it, not along with it, but after it. This is

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the point for you to begin at, and the time to begin is now. Can you say this prayer from your heart, “Lord, take me up like a child lost and weak, and keep me from all harm; Lord, help me to learn of Thee, and to love Thee, and trust Thee more and more day by day”? If you can say this, without any secret purpose to do that which is wrong, I am quite sure you will be heard and answered.

Perhaps you will ask me if I kept the peace I first knew without any fear troubling it, or any cloud throwing a shadow over my life. Instead of doing that I sometimes seemed to lose the peace altogether, and to be quite unable to see Jesus Christ at all! But we are not to judge of the reality of our peace by its occasional trouble. Our love does not, could not, live at the point of rapture. When the child comes home after long absence he will fly to his parents with the greatest joy, but his feeling will become subdued and quiet, yet not one whit the less pure and true. I used to judge myself rather harshly on this point. I wanted to live on the mountain-top in the clear air, full of light and health, or to live, as it were, just outside heaven, where I might now and again catch a note of the song within; but Christ told me to go down the hill and to do some work in the world, and to help men as far as I had been helped myself. The danger of the young Christian is that he lives too much in feeling and imagination and reverie. He must avoid this danger, or it will become his ruin. Let him get some hard work to do, and buckle to it with all his might — especially let him do work that he least likes; it may be visiting the poor, speaking to the ignorant, giving away money; but something he must do if he would keep his armour bright and his soul in high temper of courage and sacrifice. When I have seen the cloud of fear rising in the blue sky of my hope and peace,

I have always found it a good thing to go out and do

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some work for Christ. A few minutes’ talk with an experienced Christian, or a little insight into the poverty, the sorrow, or difficulty of other people, has caused the cloud to vanish and all the light to come back into the sky. If it will assist you at all in your Christian life to know something of mine, I tell you with all simplicity that my experience has been most varied and often most trying. But who has ever walked over a beautiful landscape without sometimes being at the foot of a hill and sometimes on its top? Does it follow that I am on the wrong road because I am going down hill? Does it follow that I am on the wrong road because I am caught in a shower of rain or a fall of snow? It is very much like this in going heavenward, There are hills to descend and hills to chmb; and as you know what it is to go down hill and yet to be getting higher and higher all the time, so we may be in fear, and yet be moving up to clearer heights of vision and gladness,

No doubt you will make a great many mistakes in trying to shape something like a scheme of Christian doctrine for yourself, and you will have to fight your way through a great many plausible and cruel temptations. I had to do this, I well remember. My Christian life I hold at a great expense of intellectual difficulty and pain, but I hold it all the firmer for that! I wish Christian people would talk quite freely about their doubts and fears and battles; I think it would do good to many young and timid inquirers, and would go a great way towards humanising Christian faith. I know this used to be a great difficulty with me: How do you know that Christ ever spoke the words which He is said to have spoken? The words themselves are often most beautiful; such words, for example, as “Ask and it shall be given you.” But how can we be sure that Christ ever said them? I cannot pretend to overthrow all difficulties, but I can tell you how I treat them so as to save my Christian faith. Take this very difficulty. Of course it is not easy to prove absolutely and beyond all question anything that we did not actually hear or see, and even then we cannot prove it; we can only assert, and protest, and declare, and give our word of honour for the correctness of what we say. I first make up my mind as to the character of Christ; I study that character so as to get into sympathy with it, and having done so I ask about every saying that may bear the name of Christ, Is it luke Him? Does it agree with the tone and purpose of His character? and if I can answer these questions satisfactorily, I do not care to waste time on the proof of the mere letter. On the other hand, the words of Christ have a distinct history; they can be traced from century to century, and whatever evidence can be required to identify the works of ancient authors can be increased in clearness and force as to the words of Jesus Christ. You will find it useful, however, to consult your heart as you go along the line of Christ’s teaching, and to ask yourself over and over again, Is this like Him? Is it ike His love, His pureness, His wisdom? Always remember, too, that the suggestion of a doubt simply proves nothing, and bear in mind how easy it is to deny everything. Suppose I deny that Thales ever said, “Know thyself,” what does my denial amount to? Suppose I deny that Nelson ever said, “England expects every man to do his duty,” what of it? Whatever proof you can bring to prove the authenticity of those quotations can be brought to prove the authenticity of the words which are ascribed to Christ.

Very likely you will be strongly tempted to doubt the authority of Scripture. You will say, “There are many beautiful things in the Bible, no doubt, beautiful maxims and beautiful parables in abundance, and I am quite willing to take them for what they are; but why should I be bound by the Book as an authoritative and infallible revelation? I am willing to make it one of many, but why should I set it above all and judge all by its ancient and difficult word?” Well, take it just as you put it. Remember that in deciding to reject the authority of the Bible you do not escape responsibility. You only change the point of pressure. He ought to be a very wise man who undertakes to set aside the connected history of the Church, which is traceable from point to point ever since the ascension of Jesus Christ, and which history is full of the very authority which it is proposed to reject. But I turn the tables upon the objector by distinctly asking him this question, How do you come to reject the authority of the Bible? “Because I feel I can be a moral cuide to myself,” he may answer. Very well. How did you come to be able to guide yourself? Your remote ancestor was a painted savage; be good enough to trace your pedigree from him, and tell me where you began to have some notion that you can guide yourself, and you will find that it was through the help, direct or indirect, - of the very Bible which you propose to reject, that you got that very character which you now think is able to guide itself! You propose to do away with the sun because you have now got a little stove of your own! Please remember how you came to be exactly what you are; trace your pedigree back and back; pick out every element contributed by Biblical influence, and see if you would have been the self-guiding man you are but for the Book you propose to degrade.

If you have any difficulty about the moral authority of the Bible, then the argument drawn from consciousness and experience ought not to be overlooked. What is the testimony of men who have prayed? What are the modifications which the Bible itself has claimed in this very matter of prayer, as to our way of asking, our ignorance, and our final submission to the will of God? Besides all this, I found that it was a serious thing, to say the least of it, to contradict the experience of men known to be honest and frank, who distinctly and in every form of solemn testimony declared that prayer had been heard and answered in their own cases. “But,” you will say, “what of the men who have prayed and received no answer?” JI reply, have they really prayed? Do they even know what prayer really is? Not only so, the fact that some prayers have not been answered is rather favourable than otherwise to the Biblical doctrine of prayer. God must determine the answer. I know in my own case that Wo may be a better answer than Yes, and that silence may have a good disciplinary effect upon a self-considering and impatient nature. What father answers all the prayers of his own child? I was just in this difficulty, then, that I had to reject the whole Bible and divest of all truthfulness and value the earnest testimony of innumerable persons known to be candid and honourable; this I had most certainly to do, and I was not prepared to do it. Of course I could have said that such persons were deluded, fanatical, hysterical, and so forth; but who was I that I should thus ruthlessly treat the vital faith of many generations? I do not hesitate to tell you that I have myself realised the benefit of prayer, and that I distinctly know that God answers the prayers of those who rest upon Him in simplicity and earnestness. You may say that I am deluded, but really no weight ought to be attached to that rough answer. It is a stone which you may throw at any temple. To know the moral value of prayer, you must yourself pray. That is learning which does not come by the mere letter. Wordy controversy about it is worse than useless. When you are, as I have often been, in sorrow and doubtings, bereaved, disappointed, deserted by trusted friends, and driven to your wits’ ends, then, if you pray with all your heart and in the name of Jesus Christ, mightily laying hold upon God in faith, you will have an experience which no sorrow can seriously trouble. I know exactly your difficulty. You want to reason about this thing, to make it all plain and square, to put it under certain tests, and to clear off the last cloud of doubt. Now you will never do this. It is better that you should not be able to do go. This new life is a life of faith, of faith that glorifies reason, and then shoots beyond it in light above the brightness of the sun. You know this by doing it. You get the wisdom of doctrine by the obedience of practice. You. will never swim if you keep away from the water.

Then, again, there may come up in your mind as there came up in mine, this point-blank question, Why trouble about religion at all? Perhaps you will get the same answer that I got — namely, that if we do not trouble religion, religion will trouble us. The heart of man is so made that it must have a religion, understanding that word in its widest sense. That is to say, you must be devoted to something; call it duty, business, patriotism, or even self; whatever draws out your best affection most strongly is your religion. But still I must remind you that the independence which you wish to assert may have been nurtured and defended by the very religion which you wish to neglect or destroy. Always keep this fact steadily before your mind. It is an old friend that you are tempted to cast off; it is that living and powerful influence which created you civilisation and constructed the framework of society within whose strong defences you were born. Why should you burn the bridge over which you have passed, as if nobody else required it? Why throw down the ladder up which you have climbed to your present elevation, as if no one had to come after you? If you take even this view of the case you ought to pause before throwing off the most constant and powerful of your friends.

But there is something more to be said. I want to live the very highest life that is possible to me. The question with me was not, How can I reach the very lowest and rudest point of life? but, How can I reach its very highest possibilities? Is there anything after death? Is there any higher law than is written in my conscience and heart? Do I see all that there is to be seen when I look at the small cage of this world, or is there wider space beyond? Is the grave the last lot of all men, whatever they may have been, or whatever they may have done? ‘A host of such questions came upon me and made me listen to them, though I sometimes wanted to shake them off. You may admit all this, and say, “True, but these questions were first suggested to you by parents, or teachers, or books; if they had not been suggested to you they never would have occurred.” Stop; that is clearly not true. They must, in the first instance, have occurred to somebody; come how they may, it is certain that they did come, so your argument about suggestion falls to the ground. More than this, if you please. Let us grant that there is something in this notion; it is quite clear that the suggestion would be useless if there was not something in our nature for it to take hold of. Suppose I suggest to you that you should fly, how then? You cannot respond to the suggestion, nature will not allow you. Suggest to a dog that he should sing, and see what answer you get; suggest to a nightingale that it should not sing, and wait for a reply! I want to show you that even if religion is what you call a suggestion, there is something in our nature to which it can powerfully appeal, but whether the appeal be good or bad must depend upon the practical results. Look at the fruits, look at the life, and judge honestly.

The only sensible thing for you to do is to look seriously and ingenuously at Jesus Christ and His claims. To do this you must read the Gospels over and over again to get at the character of Christ; put a clear and substantial issue before you, and patiently work it out, leaving all this. merely outside and accidental to be settled afterwards. The one thing for you to find out is, how far Jesus Christ deserves the trust of your heart. Do not flinch from that issue. Work at it. Get all the help you can upon it, and never be led away by people who would laugh you out of your religion, and then leave you to face the solemn end without comfort or help.

This brings me to a point at which I must warn you not to follow the very prevalent mistake of supposing that religion consists of a set of notions. I can imagine a man having many peculiar ideas about doctrinal divinity, and being almost what is known as a heretic in matters affecting the formal statement of dogmas, and yet having the true love of Christ in his heart. Always remember that the truth is divine, and that the words in which it is expressed are human, This will save you from many blunders, and perhaps from not a few fears and griefs in your spiritual course. It does not follow that because a man knows all the time-tables that he is a traveller. A man may commit the dictionary to heart, and yet not be able to write a speech or write a book. It is just here that so many people have failed. They think that not to differ is to agree, that not to deny is to affirm. Let me put the case to you in this way. Suppose it possible to speak with a dead man and to hold with him the following conversation: A living man occupies a dwelling-place, for which he pays rent and taxes; a living man moves about from place to place and takes an interest in things going on around him; a living man eats, drinks, and sleeps; do you, dead man, believe all this or do you not? “TI believe it unfeignedly.” Now I want you to see that the mere

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belief in all these things about a living man would not give the dead life, and life is exactly the thing that is wanted! Take a less violent case. Tell a stone-deaf man (born so) what music is, dwell on its delightsomeness, its power to rouse or soothe or gladden the hearer; describe it to him scientifically, put into his hands all the masterpieces of composition; now, though he may admit all you propose and admire all you show him, it does not give him the indispensable gift of hearing. It is exactly so in hearing the Gospel. People hear the statements, admire the hterature, and applaud the precepts of Christianity, but do not know what it is to have one spark or throb of Christian life. Now it is life that is needed. Ye must be born again. Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. We pass through Christian life very much as we pass through ordinary life — infancy, helpless ignorance, peril — on to more strength, discipline, instruction, confidence, and joy. The mischief often is that a Christian born yesterday wants to know everything in the first few hours of his existence. What would you think of a little child who withdrew from life, and denied and abused it, because he could not tell how it was possible for the earth to be resting upon nothing? Suppose he should think of suicide as the only remedy for such mad propositions! But this is just what many people do in effect! They cannot understand Christianity, and therefore they won’t be Christians. They cannot clear up all mystery, and therefore they will not ive. Suppose that a child should refuse to believe that the earth is round, because if it is round some people must be walking head downwards, and therefore must fall off. I am only now showing how possible it is not to believe even in actual facts, which are mysterious to our ignorance, and how absurd it is to deny those facts simply because we pass through a time of life when they are too difficult for us to understand. Religion is a spirit, a feeling, an outgoing of the heart up to God, and when all this is felt in relation to Jesus Christ, it is Christianity moving and gladdening the soul.

Suppose you should say, I want to get away from sin, to have it wholly taken out of me, to be good and to do good, as Christ would teach; what do you say about me? I should instantly say, you are a Christian. Not a fullyinstructed, ripe, mellow Christian, yet a child — it may be “the least in the kingdom of heaven,” yet still in that holy kingdom, thank God! I am not sure that I could claim to be much more myself even now that I have known Christ so long and so much. Even yet I go astray; I do things that I hate; I neglect duty; I go easily in the wrong direction, and with difficulty in the right. If, then, it will help you to know where I am I will tell you — lI am at the Cross, crying, God be merciful to me a sinner!

Another word, if you please, on the danger of mistaking notions for life, and scientific theology for spiritual religion. [ want you to feel that you may be a true Christian in heart, and life, and hope, and yet know next to nothing about the merely formal statement of truth. Let me put it in this way: you may deeply love the country of your birth, and yet not be a politician, much less a statesman; a man may be a patriot without being a soldier; he may be loyal, and yet know nothing about State machinery. What would you think of being told that you are not a friend of your country because you do not understand international law? It is very much the same with Christianity. A man may love Jesus Christ with all his heart, and yet be quite unable to conduct a religious controversy; he may feel all the gracious power of the Cross, and not be able to shut the mouth of the gainsayer by mere reasoning. I hold, then, that you are

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not to distress yourself simply because you are not yet able to argue and defend and expound as you would like to do. Such power may come by and by. You will, of course, grow in knowledge; this is a vital part of your duty; if you neglect it you may well suspect the genuineness of your faith. Of course if a man is a statesman as well as a patriot so much the better; and if a man is a deep theologian as well as a Christian it may be so much the better too; but the first thing to be certain about, and comparatively speaking the only thing to be certain about, is that the Divine life has begun in the soul, and that love is climbing, vine-like, around the blessed Cross of the Son of God.

Do not distress yourself because you cannot give an exact history of your new life. We cannot always tell the time when the kingdom of God was set up in the soul. Keep your mind steadily on the fact that the kingdom is actually within you, and do not fret the soul because of minor questions. What are the outward and visible signs of the inward kingdom of Christ? We are told that if any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creature; old things are passed away, and all things have become new. Now the fear is, that new habits may be mistaken for new principles. Of course new principles will always create new habits — must do so as a matter of spiritual necessity; at the same time, a habit may be mechanically formed and maintained without any really vital change of motive. It will do you good, then, to inquire into the real quality of your motives. “Now why do I do this? I go regularly and punctually to the house of God — why? I give to every collection that is made in the church — why? I say my prayers — why?” If you put searching questions to yourself in this way, you will get to know something of the true state of your heart; and, above all, you will see what need you have of all the help which the Spirit of God can give. Old things may be done with a new motive; such as going to church, reading the Bible, and showing interest in the progress of society. Even old recreations may be enjoyed with a new spirit; they may be kept in their right place, and be taken up and laid aside with a mastery inspired by the Spirit of Christ. I am the more particular in speaking about habits and observances, because in my young days I used to think that if I could have some place curtained off for secret worship, and could go through certain ceremonies at regular periods of the day, it would help me very much in my spiritual life. I remember well that there was one particular corner in my private room which I was most anxious to consecrate. By and by the Spirit said to me, My kingdom is more spiritual than you know; it is far wider, too; it is quite right to have special places and special times for worship; but remember that God is a Spirit and that He can hear you in the crowded street as well as in this little corner, and that a man may be as much in secret in a great throng as in a valley where no foot but his own was ever found. Secrecy refers to spirit rather than to mere locality. In the great thoroughfare you may enter into your closet, and shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret! I then saw that I had been going too much by the letter, and had been giving limited meanings to thoughts that belonged to all space and time.

I find it extremely difficult to give a list of outward and visible signs of spiritual revival, because those signs will vary according to constitutional characteristics. It would be easy enough to speak of good temper, willingness to forgive, honourableness in business, generosity to the poor, and the like; but in saying that these are suresions of the kingdom of God in the heart, we are saying what needs itself to be more exactly and critically explained. Some men are good-tempered simply because they cannot help it; some men are forgiving; and some men are generous for the same reason. A man born with a black complexion has more difficulties in life than the man born with a light one. As a rule his character is intense, his temper is violent, and his depression of spirits is very marked. The bilious temperament will suffer more in a day than the sanguine temperament may suffer in a lifetime. The Christianity of the sanguine man will be sanguine, the Christianity of the bilious man will be bilious, the Christianity of the sceptical man will be controversial. We cannot, therefore, justly judge one another. We are, indeed, strangers to each other; as much so as if we had been born in different worlds, and no spirit is just but the spirit of honest and magnanimous charity. I will not, therefore, pretend to say who are Christians, yet I can approach that judgment with proper caution by indicating who are not Christians. “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His.” Ifa man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” “If any man say he loveth God and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” He who is unforgiving, hard-hearted, unsympathetic, self-considering, how can he enter into the kingdom of heaven? “If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me. On the other hand, if a man honestly tries, according to scriptual direction to be right and to do right, how great soever his failures, and how bitter soever his self-accusations — the bitterer the better — the gentle Lord will not cast him off: “the bruised reed He will not break, the smoking flax He will not quench;” patient, hopeful, Jesus!

The main question should not be about outward signs, but about inward convictions and sympathies. You know very well what name makes your pulse throb most quickly, what object lures you with the mightiest fascina-T tion, and what prayers carry with them your heartiest consent. You know very well what it is that you really sigh and pant for most. Now, is it for purity? Is it for the purity which follows pardon? Is it for the pardon which the Cross was set up to procure? Do not flinch from this question. Force it. Settle it now. And if you can say, “Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee,’ rely upon it the hand of Christ is upon you in token of His claim and defence. Perhaps you ought to be careful as to the time at which you decide this question. If, in one of your gloomy moods, you will probably decide unjustly against yourself; if in one of your brightest hours, you may probably take too hopeful a view of your heart. Take an average time, and settle the question honestly and positively. I have known holy men write bitter things against themselves through physical depression: their soul has been wounded through the flesh. But God knows them, and they shall not be lost, though their weariness be very ereat and their prospect black with clouds. Lord, appear unto Thy servants, and save them from the flood and the creat distress: mightily recover them from the captivity of the enemy, and lead them into the pavilion that is strong and full of light.

As to your training in the Divine life, I do not hesitate to advise the postponement of studying controversial religious literature. You will not be in a fit state for this study probably for many years; some people are, happily, never fit for it. Read the most spiritual books you can lay hands on; specially let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly, and be very familiar with human nature. My own ideal of life is daily continuance in spiritual fellowship and in helping the poor, the afflicted, and the sorrowing. Be much in the wilderness and much in the city, as Jesus was; that is, be much in prayer and much

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in philanthropic activity. “Faith without works is dead.” When you are doubting the evidences of your acceptance with God, call together the blind, the halt, the withered, and maimed — give to them of your substance — and as you are dealing out your bread to the hungry, God will visit you and! you will see a great light. Don’t mope and fret. Don’t charge God foolishly. Go out and work in His vineyard, and the “penny” you earn will be as great wealth to your soul. I want to be, and I want you to be, “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus;” to have bread to eat that the world knoweth not of, and springs of living water that lie far away from the noisy paths of the common world. Every morning go early for a verse that shall be your companion all the day, and get a page of good Christian writing somewhere that will stimulate and strengthen you. One clear thought will guide you a day’s journey through the wilderness, and one vision of God will scatter the darkness of the blackest night. Cry out for the living God, as if chiding Him for absence which has made you lonely and cold. Say unto Him, Why standest Thou afar off, O God? Why hast Thou left my heart in silence and great fear? I wait for Thee; I long for Thee; without Thee my sadness is a great burden and my tears are full of bitterness. Christ, come to my soul! Abide with me! When will my beloved come, leaping upon the mountains and skipping upon the hills, saying to my soul, Rise, my love, my fair one, and come away: for, lo! the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. O Saviour, speak thus to me, and my sorrow will vanish like mist in the morning!