The Valley of Decision. The Place of Blessing

The question is often asked as to what it is that in Keswick and other Conferences so influences men, and brings a power to bear on them which in the ordinary services of the same speaker is not felt. The answer is to be found in the fact that men are invited to come to the meetings with a definite need, and are helped towards a definite step for the fulfilment of that need. Is not this the great secret of the success of our evangelists? They occupy men intensely and continuously with the thought of their need of salvation, and the possibility of their obtaining it at once. And just so in Conferences on the spiritual life; men who feel burdened by the thought of their continual sinning, and their impotence in seeking for victory, are invited to come and hear how deliverance can be obtained. It is the tone of confident decision in the speaker in regard to what he holds out that is the key to the influence he exerts in helping men to take the decision as to what they are to do and to be.

There are other spheres in which the same secret of success in preaching the Gospel will be found. It is specially seen in the Students’ Christian Association. All who have heard Dr. Mott, or some of the other leaders in the work, know how, while the phraseology is different from Keswick, the essential feature is the same emphasis placed on immediate decision. When Dr. Mott, years ago, did such a remarkable work among the students of Edinburgh, it was felt, that in his whole appeal to the will, they were made to feel the contagious influence of a power that gave them courage to hope for deliverance. It was not a teaching that made an impression, which men were to carry home and think about — that may have been the case with some — but with far the larger number the help was found in the positive note of confidence in a present and immediate change.

It was the same note that breathed in all his work among Christian students. As he pleaded for the irrevocable surrender to the vow of spending at least half an hour every morning with God, it meant to many the giving up of habits of sloth and self-indulgence, and thereby the consecration of the whole day to the service of God. It was on this account that he so often used the expression both in speaking and in writing: “Next to the act of conversion, in which a man turns from sin to God, and after that, of the reception of the Holy Ghost, as the power of a new life, I know of nothing that will aid a man so much in the Christian life as the undiscouragable resolution to spend at least half an hour in the morning alone with God.” The apparently simple act of the will in taking the decision meant nothing less than the full surrender to live for God and His will.

It was that same call for decision that appealed so mightily to bring men out as volunteers for the Foreign Mission field. After the command of Christ to preach the Gospel to every creature, as resting upon every disciple, had been enforced with all the urgency of a man who himself had yielded his whole being to His service, an appeal was made to all who were really willing to show their full allegiance to Christ, to say whether there was any reason for their not at once accepting His call. In the Life of Douglas Thornton, we read how he and a friend after a meeting went out into a field under the open heavens in perfect agony about this burden that was being laid upon them, and how they did not rest until they had the courage to make a full surrender.

In the same book we get a glimpse of the intensity with which men like Thornton, at the Liverpool Conference, threw themselves into the work of prayer and of influencing others. Under the deep conviction that they had actually given themselves to Christ, to receive in prayer His guidance and power, they proved what it meant to live wholly for the Kingdom. Dr. Mott has said that the book that has influenced him most in his life is John Foster’s Decision of Character. The word is characteristic of his whole work and of that of his fellow-workers in the great Volunteer Movement.

Mr. George Sherwood Eddy, a missionary and delegate to the World Missionary Conference, gave some six months before the Conference, in a meeting, his witness as to what had been the secret of his power. “I remember fifteen years ago, before going out to India, sitting down with my room-mate, now in China, and saying to him: ‘What are we going to tell them out there on the field? What message have we got for men? Are we merely going to tell them about Christ? If so, it would be cheaper to send out Bibles and tracts. Can we tell them that we know Jesus Christ saves and satisfies, that He keeps us more than conquerors day by day? ‘I said, ‘I am not satisfied. I do not feel that I have a message such as I need for men out there, nor the experience, nor the power. If we have not, is not the one great thing we need before we leave this country — to know Him? ‘From that day to the end of our student days we rose every morning at five o’clock. From five to six we had an unhurried hour for the Word of God, and from six to seven an unhurried hour for prayer. These two hours each day changed our lives, and we were unspeakably blessed.” That valley of decision was to them truly the valley of blessing. And God has set His seal to it in the fruit of Mr. Eddy’s work.

It is this note that is too often working in our evangelical preaching. It is this note that will be greatly needed if slumbering or feeble but well-meaning Christians are truly to be roused. People are content when they hear what they think a profitable discourse. They carry away the impression, and hope that some way or other, effect will be produced. And still they go on in that half-hearted religion, to which they confess but from which they cannot find the power to escape. If God’s Spirit begins truly to move in the Church, the preaching will need a tone of decision hitherto but little known. The hearer must feel that he is called to face a crisis. He is to say whether he is really going to yield to Christ’s claim, and to surrender his heart and life to His service. By the grace of God the minister must seek to get hold of him and not to let him go until the decision is taken.

And why have I written all this? It is because I feel deeply that unless there sound throughout the Church the call to an immediate repentance on the part of believers, and there is held out to them the hope of a possible, of a sure restoration to a life devoted to Jesus Christ, there is no prospect of anything like a true response to the plea of the Conference in Edinburgh and the claim of our Lord in heaven. The sentences that were uttered in regard to the impotence of the Church, and the disloyalty of Christians to their

Saviour, ring in my ears (see Chapter II.). How I wish that every thoughtful, prayerful friend of missions could take up these sentences and give himself away to take in their full meaning. Surely the question would then come with tremendous urgency, “Can anything be done to bring Christians to a sense of their shame, and to the desire for the restoration of that spirit of loyalty and self-devotion without which Christianity is but a form?”

If we are to look to the ministers to lead people to a conviction of what is wrong in their state, to a desire for what is better, to a faith in the possibility of an entire change in all who are willing for it, we must have men in whom the Spirit of God works such a faith in the power of Christ as shall enable them to inspire their hearers with an entirely new hope.

And where are these men to be found? In the 1700 congregations of the Free Church of Scotland, of which mention was made, there surely must be not a few in whose heart the passion of Jesus Christ for those for whom He died burns like a fire. But many are not conscious of what power God can exert through them. If they truly know the power of Jesus Christ to keep them loyal and true, they have a message that will assuredly reach some hearts. Let loyalty to Christ, full, unflinching, whole-hearted loyalty, become the keynote of their praying and their n8 THE STATE OF THE CHURCH

preaching. Let a few band themselves together to ask God for this one thing — the full insight into the terrible condition of a Church in which so few members are won to Christ by the preaching of the Word. Let them offer themselves to God for a new baptism of His Spirit, and a new power to preach the day of the Lord and His presence in the midst of His people. Let them not rest until they begin to gather together, however few they be, the souls who are willing to be the living witnesses, that Jesus Christ does indeed save from the power of selfishness and the world. He does indeed enable men and women in the ordinary walk of life to live with His life so in their heart that the conquest of the world for Him shall be the greatest reality, the all-absorbing object of their life and their love.

Teachers of psychology and ethics tell us that to break the power of an old habit, or to cultivate an entirely new one, the first step is that the initiative should be taken with full purpose of heart, and that everything should be done, by pledge or public confession, at once to break away from the old, and to commit one’s self with no room for compromise. They tell teachers that the application of this principle will give in many cases the needed help to those who otherwise look upon deliverance with despair. It is just this that the preacher needs who comes to call feeble backward Christians to a new life of loyalty and devotion. If they can be brought to confess the wrong of their position, and their impotence to put it right, to believe that Christ by His Spirit can strengthen them to escape from the bondage in which they have been serving self, and the world, they will find the courage for taking the decisive step. The faith that Christ is able to keep them in that close relationship with Himself which makes a life of consecration possible and most blessed, will enable them to step out into the full surrender of themselves to His mighty power; and the Church will see what wonders God can do in those who wait on Him. Let us but have witnesses, in the pulpit or out of it, in whom the power of a living testimony sounds the notes of victory, and we shall find that God is faithful to give revival where hitherto all had been hopeless.

It is in the valley of decision that such preachers and such witnesses are found. It is in the valley of decision, that is, the valley of judgment, where a man feels himself utterly condemned and yet takes courage to believe in what Christ can make of him, that the Church will find the secret of her lost power, and the courage for that surrender to Christ and His service which seeks to know of no other measure than that of the love in which He gave Himself for us.

“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision.” Such is the prayer many will offer.

But do let us understand that we may Yiot wait till that happens. Let each one who hears the call of God go down, even if it be all alone, into the Valley of Decision, and yield himself a willing sacrifice into His hands.