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THE DIVINE INDWELLING

E. WOODWARD BROWN
AUTHOR OF "LIFE IN SOCIETY."
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" To whom God would make known what is
the riches of the glory of this mystery, Christ
in you the hope of glory."

ii

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York Chicago Toronto
Publishers of Evangelical Literature

Copyright, 1895, by
Fleming H. Revell Company.

CONTENTS.

I.
THE DIVINE SIDE OF THE INDWELLING.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. A General View  1 1
II. The Character of the Indwelling  17
III. The Indwelling Positive and Marked .... 24
IV. Individuality in the Work  29
V. Spiritual Life  37
VI. The Divine Renewal  46
VII. Growth in Grace  54
VIII. The Divine Illumination  60
IX. The Subjects of Illumination  69
X. The Characteristics of Illumination  74
XI. Divine Guidance  80
XII. Helps to Guidance  90
XIII. The Indwelling Makes Free  98
XIV. God in us Comforts  110
XV. God in our Ordinary Life  121
XVI. The Indwelling a Help to Play  127
XVII. The Indwelling a Bodily Help  134
XVIII. The Indwelling Forever  140
XIX. Everlasting Life a Growth  146
7

8 CONTENTS II.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE INDWELLING.
CHAPTER PAGE
XX. The Believing Life  155
XXI. A Good Life  164
XXII. A Loving Life  177
XXIII. Christian Hope  192
XXIV. Patience  200
XXV. Fellowship with God  208
XXVI. Fellowship with Others  215
XXVII. A Life of Prayer  224
XXVIII. A Life of Praise  233
XXIX. Christian Courage  242
XXX. Christian Utterance  252
XXXI. Christian Service  ,  259
XXXII. Christian Success  269
XXXIII. Joy in God  281
XXXIV. Peace in God  293
XXXV. Glorification  306
XXXVI. Conclusion  310

THE DIVINE SIDE OF INDWELLING.

CHAPTER I.
A GENERAL VIEW.
Only in a relative sense are we to understand
that " the Holy Ghost was not given until after
Jesus was glorified." Before Pentecost his pres
ence was not so universal, so permanent, so pow
erful as now ; but there were spiritual lives, there
were prophets and revelations, miracles and en
dowments then. Yet now the sphere is greater;
the light, the power, the consolation are greater;
faith, love, joy, and peace are greater; privi
leges are greater — this in extent, in permanency
and power. Old Testament prophets continually
speak of the day transcending theirs ; but there
has ever been a measure of the Spirit, even the
" Light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world." From the beginning it was meant,
and ever it has been endeavored, that God should
be especially with man — in whom earthly creative
work has reached its goal, in whom nature is
united to spirit and earth to heaven — and it is
only because of his fall and his sin that he has
not been " filled with all the fullness of God."

12 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
So, then, we may have a life full of God's gov
erning and helpful presence. This was the life
of Abraham, the life of Moses, the life of the pro
phets. This was the life of Jesus. He had con
stant thought of the Father's presence, constant
support in it. He is the most illustrious example
of this life. At his baptism " the heavens were
opened, and the Holy Ghost descended upon him
in bodily shape as a dove." The Spirit gave him
guidance : " Being full of the Holy Ghost," he
was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and re
turned *' in the power of the Spirit into Galilee."
The Spirit gave him consolation : there were
depths and extremities in his trial that demanded
for him help; and God, who works everywhere
with his own — their comforter — worked now and
here with his Son. The Spirit also gave that
boldness, supported by an inward witness to
truth and right; that independence of all illegal
ecclesiasticism, all unrighteous public opinion, all
unwise private advice, the Saviour had. The
Spirit also gave the knowledge, the wisdom, and
the utterance: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon
me," read Jesus, " and he hath anointed me to
preach the gospel." The Spirit, too, gave the
vision of the triumph, this perhaps in some hour
of sadness, and Jesus exclaimed, " I beheld Satan
fall as lightning from heaven." And the Spirit
gave him power to conquer death, for the Spirit

A GENERAL VIEW 13
kept the holy body unsoiled and in its integrity ;
then quickened and upraised it ; for we read, " Put
to death in the flesh, but quickened in the Spirit."
Jesus, the example of all Christian graces and
glories, is, in this union of the Spirit with him
self, our forerunner. The process in him re
peats itself in those that are his. Do we not
read: "Abide in me, and I in you ; " " He dwell-
eth with you, and shall be in you ; " " Ye are
not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be the
Spirit of God dwell in you " ? Paul says : " The
Holy Spirit dwelleth in us ; " and John : " Greater
is he that is in me than he that is in the world; "
and Peter : " By the promises we are made par
takers of the divine nature." We also read:
" Know ye not that the Holy Ghost is in you,
except you be reprobates?" When Jesus said,
" I am the vine, ye are the branches," he saw the
vine of life, the eternal stock below the branches
and before the fruit, steadily sending vigor into
brittle tendril and tough branch, into green grape
and ripening fruit. Do we not read : " Be filled
with the Spirit," and, " That Christ may dwell in
your hearts by faith," and, also, " That ye might
be filled with all the fullness of God," and again,
" Of his fullness have all we received "?
This indwelling is as possible foi all as is the air
that speeds over the earth, pervades every place,
sweeps round and round all things; this when

14 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
over the sea and across the mountain and over
the valley ; this when filling all broad, free spaces,
all far-spreading distances. This indwelling Spirit
is as possible for all as is the sun ; no particularity,
no exclusiveness, no unfairness in dealing with
any ; never and in no circumstances out of reach
of any. The promise is, " Whosoever." The gift
is, " The Holy Spirit to them that ask." Not an
animal, not the smallest of the Infusoria, but has
the power to open and close its mouth to receive
or reject food — the power to do this at pleasure.
So not a man but can receive God.
That God is for his own we all know. He calls
them by their names, he numbers the very hairs
of their heads, he puts their tears in his bottle, he
counts their sighs and watches their steps. But
he is also in his own ; drawing and bending and
softening; indispensable and inseparable. His
are the grace of the new birth and all the sweet
spiritual life. His are the guidance and the com
fort his own receive ; his their liberty, their seal
ing and witness, in all the calm, the joy, and the
power. His are their adoration and praise, their
confessions and intercessions. His are those
hymns and doxologies that prelude the worship
of the angels and of the spirits of the just. He
was the inspiration of the prophets and apostles.
His are the planting and training, the guiding and
guarding of the church. His is grace, in all its

A GENERAL VIEW 15
mighty words and laws, its mighty ordinances
and works.
We may walk along this avenue of the garden
of our Eden, look a little at the vista down and
beyond, and glance also over the sward and the
flowers on either hand as we go. It is a place of
waters and fruits and good company. Many in
it are the sacred things of courage and consolation
and hope. A river of life flows beside each be
liever's path, the river of life from the throne of
God. Every one may drink of the creative and
recreative water; every one does who repents of
sin, lives in faith, and walks in light. The tree
of life that stands in the paradise of God, bearing
twelve manner of fruits, bears them for the people
of God, and its leaves are for the healing of the
nations. At this living tree ours need not be a
stranger's look, one over the fence, but an owner's
look, a straight, appropriating, and satisfying look.
Through this gate we enter as never elsewhere
into the wonders of God. This union is the foun
dation, broad and strong, of the church ; beneath
the whole and supporting the whole is the Rock,
the living Rock on which the living stones are
set, and filling the whole with glorious life.
Nothing so royal as this union, nothing so
sacred, nothing such a note of distinction,
nothing anywhere by which God communicates
so much of himself. In all his dealings with

1 6 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
his people he gives the first place to the Spirit's
presence — this received by faith. Here is the
secret and power of a new life, the root and
trunk. For long might we be asking questions
and learning of the Lord and his Word. We
might muse long and lie awake through very
delight of this teaching. In the fact we are even
entered into our highest glory and blessedness.
There is a fascination in going round and round
this — God present with us, and with distinguish
ing gifts. Dear indeed is the fact to his people
in all their working and warring and suffering ;
much is it brought out in hymns and prayers and
confessions — that God will seek and find and fill
us in " the exceeding greatness of his power to
usward who believe."
Thus have we taken a run out here and there
and glanced about in this strange, wonderful, and
delightful city of God, into which it has been our
hap this day to enter, a few strains of the blessed
music to hear, the golden gates being left a little
open. This putting of himself by our Lord into
his people, his very thought and spirit and self
into them, hallows and ennobles them ; and as
the morning sun fills the earth with brightness, so
fills them with hope and gladness. May ours be
this " life hid with Christ in God." O Lord, may
something of all this great glory be ours. Amen.

CHAPTER II.
THE CHARACTER OF THE INDWELLING.
THAT Spirit which is everywhere in the uni
verse, the Spirit of creation, is especially manifest
in intelligences, and still more especially manifest
in those who are called the sons of God ; manifest
more or less directly, more or less imperfectly,
but yet manifest. The manifestation has certain
well-defined characteristics.
The Spirit in us is secret; is in depths and si
lences. His working is like the working of cohe
sion and chemical affinity, of heat and electricity,
forces without sight or sound. His influence is
like certain decisive influences of society, subtile
and not felt. He is like the wind, which is
viewless, scentless, tasteless, and often soundless.
" Surely the Lord is in this place ; and I knew it
not," said Jacob. So God is often hidden when
at work upon a human soul, awakening, convict
ing, converting; a good work going on and not
known to be a divine working. God's indwelling
is hidden behind second causes. His real pres
ence with his own may be easily overlooked;
17

1 8 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
depends, in the perception of it, upon spiritual
delicacy, sensitiveness, faith. It may easily seem
but the creation of poetic imagination, or but that
idealism which out of what we lack furnishes what
we want. It may easily seem to us, tired, sick,
or sorrowing, but the glorious creation of the wish
it were so. The vital movements, mysterious and
obscure, are perceived only by the studious.
The Spirit's work within is usually gentle and
delicate ; is made only in the responsive and
sympathetic soul, as we make precious communi
cations only to those who value them. Not only
unperceived, but very gently, occurs the making
the leaf green ; the flower red or yellow or blue ;
the sour fruit sweet. There is no greater sign of
God than spring, no greater wonder for man,
when sick at heart for the length, the desolation
and oppression of the winter ; we are now borne
on the rolling earth into a warmer climate ; a new
world is revealed to us, the world of grass and
flowers, of leafing trees and myriad life, a whole
fair earth of woodland and grass-land. It is a
great revelation, but very quietly is it made. A
few weeks of still or stormy weather do it all. So
usually the precious communications of God come
gently — renewal, consolation, guidance. Only to
certain simple believing ones did Christ appear
after his resurrection.
The divine manifestation is also mysterious.

THE CHARACTER OF THE INDWELLING 1 9
The great all-surrounding God begins to affect a
person ; how and why in this manner or in that
manner, we hardly know. It often seems as with
out reason as the movement of the clouds in their
sweep over valley and plain, over lake and slope ;
as the air-currents so irregular in time, in force,
in direction ; as the winds that blow when they
please, where they please, as much as they please.
The workings of the Holy Ghost are not without
law, not without reason and cause, but they are
mysterious. Again, the work within is thorough. Water
goes down into the soil, enters each one of the
infinitesimal rootlets, goes by these thousand ways
into the stalk, exhales into the air, and returns
again to the ground. So the Spirit goes down
and in and on, and gets to all cells and germs.
He enters body and soul, and opens wide the
heavenly gates to entrance free for every one,
with all that properly belongs to him. He
reaches to obstinacy, to perverseness, to penu-
riousness; to every sin and every sorrow, and
even every fret and perplexity. He cleanses, he
soothes, he heals.
So also the divine indwelling refreshes. The
soil takes in the warmth of the sun, the breath of
the air, but that which most helps life is water.
The housewife watches in the dooryard the wa
tered plant; it pushes its way upward through

20 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
earth and mold, through leaves and netted roots,
through all that is decaying or dead, and ends a
living, graceful thing. Water freshens the tree
in root and bark, in sap, foliage, and fruit. Plains
and valleys, fields and all fertile places owe their
fertility largely to the dews and rains, to the
watercourses beneath and around. The waters
of the Nile, in what they bear and what they do,
make possible in the desert growing grain, groups
of palms, bleating flocks and lowing herds, a
thousand forms of life ; a strip from the Abyssin
ian mountains to the Mediterranean, across the
death and nothingness of the vast and silent
Sahara. Says the prophet : " And it shall be in
that day, that living waters shall go out from
Jerusalem." And he goes on to tell how full
they are, how refreshing and salubrious, how
wide and far they shall extend. So the Spirit re
freshes. He gives increase of faith, increase of
hope, increase of love, new zeal for the Word,
new zeal for the work. Isaac dug wells of re
freshment, and it is set down to his praise ; Jacob
dug a well that handed down his name a thou
sand years. But Christ can give to each to have
within " a well of water springing up into everlast
ing life." Christ within gives a perennial fresh
ness of thought and feeling. Scripture says, " I
will run the way of thy commandments, when
thou shalt enlarge my heart." I shall be free

THE CHARACTER OF THE INDWELLING 21
from that which impedes me, hampers me; I
shall go fast, I shall run. And again Scripture
says, " They shall mount up with wings as eagles."
They shall be so refreshed as to seem to be able
to fly ; they shall have the spirit to fly, to break
away from that which holds them down, that
which holds them in ; they shall rise above their
depressing circumstances, their depressing mis
eries, their snares, all that can really hurt them.
The wings, the wings of God shall carry them
gloriously upward and onward. The inspiration
of the Spirit shall cause them to rise above an
noyances and all hindrances. They never creep,
at times they do not walk or even run — they fly ;
the earth is under their feet — they soar above the
mist and the storm.
The Spirit in his ministrations is abounding.
As water pours out on every side from the over
filled vessel and seeks to run everywhere, so the
Spirit multiplies his influences on every hand and
in every soul. There is a spring, a well : it taps
the subterranean waters, which rise toward the
surface, sometimes quietly and sometimes with
force and volume. There is a stream : it creeps
and turns, now narrows and then broadens; it
flows slowly or swiftly, rolling over stones and
pebbles and sand, bearing sticks and leaves and
logs, depositing its little burdens here and there,
but ever going on and out and beyond ; spread-

22 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
ing, deepening, moving toward the ocean. There
is a river : steadily it runs, day and night, week
and month, in broad and full channel, carrying
the united waters of the thousand little streams
that are among the hills ; carrying the rainfall of
a large territory. So works the Spirit, as a pure
river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding
out of the throne of God and the Lamb. There,
too, is the sea: very wide and very deep; the
constant movement, the multitudinous waves ; the
sea that stretches so far away — a whole so great
that across its miles and along its years the imag
ination fails to go. So large is the grace of God.
We read, " The chariots of God are twenty thou
sand, even thousands of angels." There is no
lack with him. There are no poor in his king
dom. " For unto every one that hath shall be
given, and he shall have more abundantly."
There is no need. There is "abundance of
peace," "abundance of grace," abundance of
promises, abundance of performances.
This pouring forth of the Spirit makes the re
cipients to abound in the possession of him and
of the things that are his. " Eat ye that which
is good and let your soul delight itself with fat
ness." The Spirit controlling purpose and feel
ing, desire and deed, enables a person to be in
the very healthiest of states, the very best of re
lations ; to be thriving, advancing, taking in and

THE CHARACTER OF THE INDWELLING 23
giving out all that he can. I can hardly say too
much of the possible largeness of the appropri
ation of Christ; of the possible good things in
having him as the inmost basis of life ; of the pos
sible riches of salvation when the Spirit of God
passes into the spirits of men, and that which was
done in Christ, and has since been done for Christ,
begins to repeat itself in those who are Christ's.

CHAPTER III.
THE INDWELLING POSITIVE AND MARKED.
The earth is endowed with positive power to
draw back every stone we throw into the air —
endowed with the force of attraction. Light has
its manifestation. Heat has its effective power.
So the divine indwelling in a person has its out
going, its manifestation, its flame. A heavy blow
makes warmth, a heavier blow makes heat, a still
heavier makes heat and light. The crashing of
the meteor through the air makes heat and bril
liant light. There are many things which cannot
be hidden, kept concealed, nobody know of their
existence. The divine indwelling is one of these.
It is positive power and is sometimes very mani
fest. I see the flame filling a pile of brush in the
clearing and rising in splendor. I look put in the
evening over the long slope across the lake, and
see here and there a light shining through spaces
of air. I go out and view the stars, fires afar.
I read of the sword-shaped flame at the gates of
Eden, the burning lamp of Abraham, the burning
bush of Moses, and all the fiery manifestations of
24

THE INDWELLING POSITIVE AND MARKED 2$
the especial divine presence. You cannot hide
the dome of the stars unless you shut your eyes.
So you cannot hide him who has God in him. You
cannot hide the divine grace in its workings.
Look at the Spirit in convincing of sin : dis
quieting, sometimes terrifying a man, taking away
his old security, isolating him, making him to feel
alone with God. The influx of the Spirit is some
thing decidedly real. His world is made mani
fest to that soul. The fan that winnows is turn
ing, judgment is a reality. The man has been
admitted to behold God and to behold himself.
Yes, conviction of sin is a very positive thing;
and whoever has it is a witness for God.
Look at Christ in converting. The winter
sweeps down from the north, the trees drop their
leaves, multitudes of plants die, much of animal life
ceases to be, the surface of the earth freezes, snow
covers the ground. But a change comes. The soft
south wind and advancing sun melt the snow, the
floods of spring break up the ice along the streams,
the frost comes out of the ground, the warmth
increases. It is a wonderful work. So regener
ation is wonderful, a manifestation of the super
natural ; the new manner, the unexpected pray
ing and praising. You clear a field ; you let the
Stumps rot out ; you have it bright with green
grass. Somewhere in that field there likely is an
oak, strong and thoroughly linked, nowhere thin

26 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
or ragged, rich in color. Now grandly it swings
with the wind; and now stately and silent it
stands; but ever is it a thing of vigor. So is
a living Christian: vigorous as the orange that
blossoms and fruits together and through the
whole season; vigorous as the stately magnolia
of the South with its great leaves and giant flow
ers, a very tree of heaven. He is no longer heavy
of head and of heart ; he is not rigid or languid,
worn or feeble ; he is of the trees of the Lord, full
of sap — the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath
planted — so fresh and rejuvenescent, so full of life,
is he. He puts a life not their own into nature
and common life. His trend is as evident as
that of the rocks. He is as easily known as the
mountain- range. I do not expect him neces
sarily to be like the earthquake or the volcano.
But he is visible, trunk and branch, substance and
outline. You see that he is a Christian : his duties
do not burden him, ordinary matters do not chafe
and distemper him. He is like the lake: now
tranquil, reflecting the shores, and now driving
with whitecaps, coloring here and there, chang
ing to-day and to-morrow, ever doing. He is a
revelation of God : " Ye are my witnesses, saith
the Lord."
Look at the Christian in his resistance of evil.
He has feeling, action, opposition, repulsion. You
expect the atoms of gold or iron or carbon to

THE INDWELLING POSITIVE AND MARKED 27
have each kind its own great force, but with its
own particular attractions and repulsions. So do
you expect with the Christian. He, like the atom,
has a fixed constitution, and it is of a very posi
tive sort. He attracts this, he repels that. His
whole soul is open to this, his whole soul is shut
up to that. It is as when you push a thing away,
as when one body shoves another body out of its
place. Look at the Christian in his especially Christian
work. He has steady, persistent force; some
times a force as of the massive steel locomotive
rushing by with its train. He is like the angels,
who, in the vigor of their joy and love, fly in the
discharge of their duty. There is the spirit of
wisdom in leaders, of courage in heroes, of utter
ance and boldness in prophets, of goodness in
saints. Look at the Christian in his revivals. As in
the evening or in the morning the clouds are
ablaze with color, and all in a moment, so at
times shines out the Christian. He has a glow
as of heaven, he is as full of experiences of the
living God as a Hebrew prophet. The tree puts
forth new branches and leaves, new bark and
color. So, through certain returns and enlarge
ments of divine influence, the Christian has new
growth, new visibility. Believers are as precious
stones, full of light ; stones of brightness, that re-

28 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
fleet his glory who is the "Father of lights."
Intense and active, playing with color and vary
ing with line, they beam and glow and show their
wells of light. Those stones of fire and shining
ceaselessly are emblems fair of souls illumined, of
souls within that light which is over the heaven
above and the broad earth below.
He whom God especially enters is a marked
presence and power; because by outward agen
cies and inward processes he receives and makes
manifest and communicates of enlightenment,
consolation, and liberty. He belongs to this world
and also to the final and heavenly world, being
partaker of the Eternal Spirit. When the prophet
became a prophet others knew it. When the
seventy were sent forth the people perceived it.
When Christ was filled with the Spirit he was a
man of extraordinary character and work. He
who receives spiritual influence, personal com
munications from God, makes a revelation, a
peculiar manifestation of the actual Spirit of the
universe. He is a son of God, a brother of Christ.
In him is a bursting forth of the living Spirit, a
bright appearing of the Lord.

CHAPTER IV.
INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORK.
We have named some of the star-groups, the
constellations, as we call them : the Great Bear,
Orion, and the Pleiades. We have named a num
ber of the stars : the blazing star Arcturus, the
changing star Algol, the north star Polaris. God
" calleth them all by their names." How much
more then does he regard each of us ? He says :
" I know all the fowls of the mountains : and the
wild beasts of the field." How much more then
is it true, " Doth not he see my ways and count
all my steps " ? He knew the integrity of David
and of Hezekiah. He revealed to Elisha what
Gehazi had done, and the words spoken by the
king of Israel in his bedchamber. They say that
the nebulae are of all conceivable shapes : circular,
ringlike, conelike, snakelike, spiral. So are we
each his own strange self, but few perfectly alike.
Now in the full glory of humankind every one
of us, down to the eleventh magnitude, when stars
29

3°

THE DIVINE INDWELLING

fade out of sight, is before God as though the
only one, as the child before its mother.
Each person is individual to a degree, in his
constitutional and acquired tendencies. One plant
is compact, another is loose-jointed ; one is up
right, another is sprawling; one has roots and
supports of its own, another clusters with other
plants ; one keeps close to the ground, another
climbs the lattice, the fence, the tree, laying hold
and ever getting higher. Here is individuality.
So nature comes out in grace. One is Paul, an
other is James, and another John; each a dis
tinct and differing disciple. He who made every
flower to have its pattern has made every person
to have his own nature, his own lessons, his own
work and way.
Character has its individuality. Granite is rock,
and so is limestone and so is sandstone ; but each
is distinct. The pearl is a gem, and so the dia
mond ; but each is of its own type.
Duty has its individuality. To every man his
own duty. Each one can contribute something
to knowledge, to beauty, to use, to the glory of
creation ; something to the happiness of others.
Generally it is lesser work, but it has its place.
It may be simple, but in a sense it is vital.
Experience has its individuality. The heart is
.like a piece of music that sways now with joy and
now with sadness ; that is now a sweet and tender

INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORK 31
melody, now a grand and massive harmony. And
as there are various pieces of music so there are
various experiences.
Each person has his own place and care, his
own provision and possession. A river is not as
the wind, everywhere ; not like the tides, all over
the ocean and along the whole coast : it is a dis
tinct stream, within its channel. Now, while God
is unlimited even beyond the range of thought,
yet, practically speaking, he is not infinite and
boundless, nebulous, and dreary to think of. The
idea of him as working on infinite material for
an infinite time is rather an abstraction, and
while the fact is metaphysically possible, it is
hardly real. He rather has definite purposes to
accomplish by definite means. He localizes his
presence — this in the holy angels, in the spirits
of just men made perfect, and in each particu
lar Christian with his own lesser or larger pecu
liarities. Notwithstanding the glory of God's do
minion and the majesty of his person, he sees this
single world, and in it your single self. God does
not regard us as the great sea regards the shore,
the innumerable shells and pebbles of which the
sea is smoothing and rounding, one being very
much like another, and all being slowly worn to in
different sand. Indeed we are by no means before
him as a shore of sand : the grains minute, not
noticed, and indistinguishable. We are before

32 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
him, not in lots and groups, but as persons iso
lated, peculiar, distinct. His dealing suits the
constitution and needs of each one. Daily is he
nigh with preservative and protective, with educa
tive and redeeming care. He who lacks neither
power nor skill nor will discriminates in just the
way to meet each case. He thinks and feels as
to how each child fares, and follows him in life as
he goes forth to what end he may. He was a
prophet to Moses, a captain to Joshua, a shepherd
to David. " He is great in counsel." He can
advise us how to manage any business. He is
wiser than the wisest man. He can advise us how
to do what is fitting. Each case has its own pecu
liarities. Naaman's had his, the rich young man's
had his, Mary's had hers.
God's work, his thought, his love, are con
nected with you ; his will, his interest, his life, are
connected with you personally. His power, that
is so manifest in the simple plant at the roadside,
in each plot of grass or violets on a bank, can cer
tainly be made manifest peculiarly in you. It is
just as when a person gets acquainted with you,
likes you, and then has much voluntary compan
ionship with you, getting at last to be much with
you in purpose, in interest, in life. Did you ever
notice the scriptural identification of Jesus with
any believer — the being together with him, suf
ferers together, heirs together, glorified together ?

INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORK 33
Jesus moves along with each one in his separate
path, knowing each one with the utmost exact
ness, and ministering to each one, if he will, with
the utmost particularity.
While our Lord preached to men in masses, he
often turned from the crowds that pressed him
and gave particular attention to particular cases.
We have his individuality of dealing indicated in
his discourse against anxiety ; in the parables of
the lost sheep, the lost piece of money, and the
prodigal son. Poor and in need, a little one, " Yet
the Lord thinketh upon me." His thought and
action are toward me, with my temperament and
circumstances, with my infirmities and tempta
tions, with my work, my care, my weakness. He
knows what things I have need of.
Each Christian is a world by himself, is attended
and encompassed in all his ways by the living
Spirit, is a complete and everlasting work and
care of his. A mother notices and enjoys the
innocent peculiarities of the child, the husband of
the wife. A parent draws near to the child with
a hump on its back or a limp in its walk — this
saddening peculiarity endears the child. " Christ
has tasted death for every man." " He loved me,
and gave himself for me." There is individualized
redemption. It is not, Christ died for a man — he
died for and he lives for persons. They can be
numbered ; they are neither more nor less.

34 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Notice there is the Spirit for each particular
trial. " In all your afflictions Christ was afflicted."
Here are numbering and weighing and measuring ;
here are all the lesser as well as greater griefs.
In all, Christ is your faithful counterpart and
companion, even unto life's extremest end. We
read of the waters in Scripture, " They run in dry
places like a river." Now you have your own
particular burdens : the state of your health, the
state of your finances, the condition of your work,
your personal temperament, weaknesses, tempta
tions. You are permitted to feel that God will
have a special charge of you in just these matters.
He understands just you and knows how to man
age just you. He can help you a good deal.
Jesus really meant it when he said, " Come unto
me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I
will give you rest." Jesus may not change your
circumstances, but he can change you, he can be
your especial helper in all your anxieties and sor
rows. You know, after exertion all day, you lay
aside your work with your clothes, and go to bed
and rest. Even so here. The mother has her
eye and her heart on the child. It is her child.
That child provides not, cares not, but has an
all-pervading trust.
Now why this individuality of dealing? It is
because God is a person and you are a person.
It is other than a natural philosophy which prevails

INDIVIDUALITY IN THE WORK 35
when we get into the region of pure personality.
Natural laws do not reign in spiritual spheres, and
the person is a spirit. Yes, the deepest poets and
philosophers are right : we belong to more than
the material world, and are subjects of more than
natural science. The ancients and the men of
medieval time were right in putting the study of
man above that of nature. The idealists are right,
man has ideals; the moralists are right, he is
moral; the religious people are right, he is re
ligious. Such is he, so apparently diverse from
the system of nature, while yet of it. Take the
vast earth of field and forest, plain and moun
tain-range, the infinite flowers and animal life : he
is above all this. Take one star of these heavens,
its huge bulk : a person has more worth than this
ten thousand cubic miles of semi-fluid Jupiter or
burning sun. Take all the stars, and they are not
equal to the feeblest child among us. His is an
order which they are infinitely below, as they go
swinging along in all their roll and precision of
curve and glory of motion. One person is infi
nitely above all nature ; when compared, his kind
is of a royal sort. Nothing like him, so grand,
so beautiful, so worthy and useful ; nothing like
him, so broad and high, and so alight with excel
lence. The person is the highest form of ex
istence. Again, in this world of innumerable sensitive

36 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
creatures, where life is everywhere, it is ours to
have a life of very high order, it is ours to be
in part above merely animal law and condition.
Man's eye takes in the stars; he stands over
against and contemplates all things. It is his to
have other thoughts and sights than the animals
have. It is his to sail other seas and reach an
other shore. It is his to have speech and tears
and laughter. He sees the intellectual structure
of the world, he beholds the beautiful, he feels
the right, he believes in God.
Now we are the better prepared to recognize
individuality as characteristic of the divine rela
tions with us. The person by his will and other
powers is eminently in each case individual and
peculiar. Then, too, we have the more individu
ality because we have person dealing with person.
The father feels that he is the father ; he talks with
his children, he is pleased with them, he lives
with them, he works upon them and by them, he
teaches and counsels. Joshua, probably meditat
ing on his work, received a vision and a commu
nication. Hezekiah, praying for his life, had
a definite answer sent him. Daniel, concerned,
and his friends praying about Nebuchadnezzar's
dream, received all the help he wanted ; this in a
dream of his own.

CHAPTER V.
SPIRITUAL LIFE.
In studying spiritual life we are studying spiri
tual physiology, the religious soul in its freely
formed habits and dispositions. We are studying
the application of redemption to the person, the
practical work of grace in heart and life, the per
sonal completion of the general work of Jesus, the
actual saving work of the indwelling Spirit. Many
are the names which this life of Christian experi
ence goes by ; many are the forms which it takes ;
many are the modes of treatment which it has
received in Christian literature. Every great re
ligious movement has made its own collection of
treatises, biographical, didactic, and other; every
generation of Christian life. Augustine, in his
" Confessions," told the story of his own experi
ence. Thomas a Kempis, in his " Imitation of
Christ," told a similar story. So, too, Tauler in
his " Theologia Germanica," Bunyan in his " Pil
grim's Progress," Doddridge in his " Rise and
Progress of Religion in the Soul."
37

38 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Much, very much, does the New Testament
speak of life : the spiritual life, the everlasting life,
the life in Christ, the bread of life, the water of
life. The word occurs scores of times. It ex
presses a large thought of our Lord's, a large ex
perience of those who have faith in him. Let us
stop for a while on this shore, and look a little
about ; behold a little the plants, the vines, and
the trees; gather a few pebbles, shells, flowers,
forget-me-nots. It is the garden land — many
transplanted flowers are in it ; and a wonderland,
for the lilies and the roses and all the things here
never die. It is the Holy Land indeed, the morn
ing land, the resurrection land.
We think we have much in having ordinary life.
But that life with which the Old Testament
abounds and the New, that which is at the heart
of every true Israelite and real Christian, is more
and fuller, is freer and higher. In this life one
inherits of nature grace and glory. Let me go
round about this palace of life ; and God grant I
may go as a child and heir of it — enter and walk
through it, not as a servant, but as a son. I wish I
could describe the vigorous vitalities, the growths,
the perfections of spiritual life. Its feeling and
freshness, its beauty and glory, are better felt than
told. It cannot be penetrated and divided or
analyzed. We can only tell about it: its begin
ning in the love of the living God ; its seat in the

SPIRITUAL LIFE 39
heart ; its opposites, halting and decrepitude, de
cay and death ; its symbols, the sun, the dawn,
and the spring. We know its light and guidance
and comfort ; the being not straitened but free in
all living ways; the getting hold of the saving
power that is around us, as in the air, a living,
eternal law ; the instant appropriation of the liv
ing Saviour if told of him. We know its flaming
ardor : now upward to God, now outward to rock
or plant, now to child of God or waif of the world.
We know its zeal to win to Christ and glory. We
know its prayer and praise and communion, and
that when one walks this living way there are
for him endless freshness and renewal, increasing
strength and stature, gifts and graces that ger
minate and blossom and ripen. And yet we can
not measure nor calculate nor even compass the
meaning and the blessing of the spiritual life.
When we answer " Yes " to the question,
" Have you experienced religion? " we are seeing
the best, hearing the best, and catching the man
ner of the best. Ours are the holy beatitudes,
each full of Christ and heaven. Ours are the
hungering and the thirsting after righteousness,
the tasting that the Lord is good, the eating of
the hidden manna. Ours are rays of light, voices
of guidance, touches of comfort, longings of love,
and bursts of joy. We are in prayers and song,
in fellowship and service, in all the sweetness and

40 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
glory of the blessing of Christ, who, blessed be his
name ! is making the ideal in and for us to be real.
Glancing at the characteristics of this spiritual
life we notice first that it is in a sense natural.
It is in ways and by methods that are reason
able and constitutional. The Christian is not like
the dislocated rock-formation — broken, twisted,
turned back on itself ; an anomaly, a reversion of
the usual order. He has not two mental com
partments, one for faith and one for reason ; one
for religious knowledge and one for ordinary
knowledge. When faith comes reason does not
go. God honors both. His light is not some
rushing meteor coming from another system, but
is the sun of our own system, is natural to it.
This life does not create in us a frenzy, an ecstasy,
and even take away consciousness. Superstition,
that world-wide parody of religion, and especially
of false religion and imperfect religion — supersti
tion has its convulsions, its unreasonableness, its
unconsciousness. Not so true religion. Here is
self-control, whatever the emotion : self-control as
a moral necessity ; a necessity for true feeling, for
true resolution, for true knowledge. Man makes
no search and finds no knowledge without he
retains his consciousness and his self-control. It
would be strange if the mind in God's image
should lose consciousness when in God's light,
and when full of God's life.

SPIRITUAL LIFE 41
Again, spiritual life is in a sense an easy life
to live. At the beginning, old habits are to be
dropped, old associations broken, and new ways
to be entered. But the Christian is so strong in
faith, hope, and love that he thinks little of diffi
culties. God freely comes, preserving, guiding.
One resents nothing, resists nothing, but bends
like the plant in the wind, floats like the stick on
the stream. While he works and neglects noth
ing which he should do, still he finds that he is
rather as the garden for another to tend and water.
The perfect law of liberty may be reached. He
who has the divine indwelling is inclined and
enabled to lead a Christian life. We know that
devotion to a work, a cause, a person, is easy
when inspired by love. For him who is inter
ested in astronomy it is easy to study astronomy.
He counts not the hours, he thinks not of his
labor that he may study the stars. Other natural
causes help. Repetition creates habit, habit creates
ease. The drill of the soldier makes him move
even automatically at the word of command.
Repetition also gives strength and skill. The
gymnast practises until he does many things
which once he was incapable of doing, until he
does with grace what once he did awkwardly,
until he does with ease what once he did with
difficulty. All the graces are easy to have and
practise. For instance, trust is not hard for the

42 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
teachable. Study its reasons and it comes of
itself. Read in biographies, histories, and the
Bible, instances of it or reasons for it, then it
arises and thrives; it grows like a garden well
worked, well watered, and that lies in the sun.
Or, again, self-denial becomes unconstrained,
spontaneous, like that of a man for his family.
Ejaculatory prayer becomes very easy for a Chris
tian. So also various Christian work.
Yet because of our nature this life is vari
able. The movement of its feeling is sometimes
quick and sometimes slow, sometimes even and
sometimes uneven ; now with great quietness like
the lake on still days, and then like the lake run
ning with waves and whitecaps. Now the spirit
soars and now sinks ; now there is a thrill and now
hardly even sense. Now the soul, " as a prince,
has power with God and with men," and now is
"in heaviness through manifold temptations."
Principles are constant ; feelings inconstant — they
have their ups and downs. Now the rain comes
down in the mountains, and presently the river is
rising; now we are sluggish and would burrow
out of sight, like streams in a dry time. Christ
comes, now in disguise and now as a prince ar
rayed. Now he leads into the valley of humilia
tion and now to the mountains where we see the
city from afar.
Further, this life in God is permanent. In the

SPIRITUAL LIFE 43
trees wells of sap are ever rising from root to leaf ;
rising through trunk and stem to topmost twig;
working their ministry of life. " The trees of the
Lord are full of sap ; the cedars of Lebanon, which
he hath planted." They not only live against de
cay within, they live against accident from with
out. So have I seen a great elm in a swampy
soil rise high, with roots as cables holding it on
every side. The cocoanut-tree, with its long,
slender, tufted shaft, withstands the hurricane be
cause the roots hold.
In Christ life is very fresh. New possibilities
are being seen, new actualities are being expe
rienced. Now you magnify your life. Spiritual
imagination is ever idealizing it, and this is ever
freshening it. God in filling it full of himself is
ever giving it a glow and a splendor. The seed,
wind- wafted or caught in the hair of an animal,
drops into a suitable place, gets put into dark
ness and moisture, germinates and sprouts, grows
and becomes a tree. This yearly renews itself,
creates new bark and rootlets, puts out new
branches and leaves. How was life freshened to
the Samaritan woman when she accepted the
Christ! How was life freshened for Matthew,
for Zaccheus, when they accepted the Christ!
Hope enters as never before; so love, so peace.
Ay, there is in the soul " a well of water spring
ing up into everlasting life." It is really a fresher

44 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
life than that of mere recreation and pleasure,
than that of mere worldly business and work,
than that of merely earthly study and knowledge.
There is no disgust ; nothing palls, nothing dis
appoints. There is unfailing freshness. New
aims, new friends, a new Friend from heaven, a
new Bible, a new Sunday, a new church, fresh
prayer, fresh praise, new occupations. Yes,
' ' The men of grace have found
Glory begun below."
Spiritual life, however, cannot fully be described
until we get beyond the present world. Human
life here is radiant and glorious as the morning —
this every-day wide-spread life of the world of
men. But what is it there where the kingdom
of God is fully restored in the human heart and in
human society ! We have the images of the Bible
to set forth the blessedness which God's wisdom
and love can bestow, still only shadowing it. As
old John Howe says, " Let God have his reserves
for our surprise and delight."
Spiritual life is limited by the condition of the
believer : by his undeveloped state, by his infirmi
ties, by his want of responsiveness to God's influ
ence. An evil will obstructs the work of the Word
of God, the ministry of teacher and preacher.
" The rebellious dwell in a dry land," " and shall
not see when good cometh." Somewhat God

SPIRITUAL LIFE 45
cannot speak when we will not hear : the ear does
not vibrate to the sound. Some duty presses ; we
dislike it, invent reasons to escape it, get to think
it no longer a duty, and do not do it. The life
from the Master, with the Master, and to the Mas
ter, is, in much, a matter of our own hearing the
Master's voice, our own following him, our own
abiding where he abides. A look from him could
arrest guilty Peter, a word from him would restore
repentant Peter; but after all, it depended upon
Peter.

CHAPTER VI.
THE DIVINE RENEWAL.
THERE is no need that eternal winter shall
reign : snow and naked lands and woods ; no green
grass, no sowing and reaping ; the earth pure white
everywhere, boundless, stretching away to the
very sea- shores; all the river systems draining
nothing, all the fields producing nothing; nature
defying our efforts. Nature allows no such thing.
The grass comes again, the buds of the fruit-trees
turn to blossoms, the little things of the garden
come up, the wheat grows fast, the little creatures
of field and wood come out of their holes, the
young of the domestic animals are all about us,
the birds sing.
So there is no need in man of spiritual death.
The life of God behind every soul may come out
whenever the person wills, and a glorious change
become apparent. He knows and feels, and others
perceive, that God is with him. This renewal is
the most wonderful fact that can occur in the his
tory of any one ; the greatest epoch, the most sol-
46

THE DIVINE RENEWAL 47
emn turning-point ; an event as wonderful as birth
and more important than death. No beginning
on earth is as bright as this. A new seed has
been put into the seed-bed of the soul ; a new
germ created, from which shall arise a tree of life ;
a new spring is opened, springing up into everlast
ing life ; the beginning of a river is made — a little
beginning away up among the highlands : it is a
river of life.
The process of moral conversion is possible, is
easily attainable. There is on the part of God
free forgiveness of sins, and in this fact thoroughly
believed and acted on is moral renewal. Love
like that given by the Lord to Peter, which re
proaches in profound sadness and yet continues
undying, has great reclaiming, converting power.
God makes a sinner to feel that he can turn his
back on all he has been ; that there is no fatalism
in a sinful, in a badly sinful life ; for hope is won
derfully stimulative to action for the better by him
who has become sick of his sin. He who was
strong in erroneous opinion, unhappy himself and
perhaps a trial to Christian friends, has sometimes
witnessed a great change in himself ; has seen his
doubts and denials pass away like " the morning
cloud and the early dew." He has seen the truths
he had denied. He has seen the mountains which
he said were not there.
This renewal is in the Spirit of God. An in-

48 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
strumental source is religious truth — truth about
law, sin, and gospel, that for years may have
lain in the mind unnoticed, unimproved, infertile.
Then, slowly or suddenly, a new light fell upon
those facts. They appeared as never before, clear,
full, powerful, commanding. The person yielded
to them and became a new man to see, to feel,
and to do. He prayed, he praised, he spoke. Now
he is wide-eyed, heaven-lighted; he wonders at
the great revelation ; he surprises himself, and
often surprises others. A flame, a fire, the sun
are vivid ; so is he.
Another instrumental source is faith, which is
throughout life the greatest helpful human ele
ment. As in nature we are continually believing,
so in grace. The son has faith in the father; the
great Son of man and Son of God had faith in the
Father. All the sons of God have faith in him.
The faith creates the active life ; in a sense, even
the very life and sonship. " We are the children
of God by faith" — personal faith, present faith;
it is delivering faith, it is renewing faith. Now
one is born again ; now he has the new name ; now
he begins especially to be divinely nourished ; now
he is out of Egypt and into Canaan, out of the
wilderness and into the Promised Land. His faith
has carried him into the whole new life ; has made
him acquainted with new hopes, new people, new
friends. It has proved the birth-power of his soul.

THE DIVINE RENEWAL 49
His faith has put him into God as a plant is put
into the soil.
The soil gives mechanical support, the soil and
air give nourishment to the plant ; and the plant
having its own life in itself, there is now no reason
why it should not live and grow. And it shall.
Each season it shall spring up higher. There is
limit to the size and age of a tree, but there is no
such limit to the trees of life.
The real source is God himself. Facts have
been discovered about the solar system ; distur
bances, changes, which were finally accounted for
by the discovery of a new planet. So there are
changes in man which are accounted for by the
presence of God, recreative and redemptive —
these conversions, these new and heavenly graces
in one, these new and beneficent purposes. The
deepest poets have never pictured human nature
as perfected in itself. The best men of affairs
have never held any such opinion. Ordinary ob
servers do not, as a rule, have any such view.
Whatever else may be perfected by virtue of
power in itself, human nature is not. God must
intervene to redeem ; must get into a human life
and make it a kind of modification of his life. God
quickens the soul as the air quickens the burning
coal to a flaming and glowing mass ; as the air
quickens the soil when we plow and harrow or
spade and hoe, or quickens us ourselves — we open

50 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the window in the morning, we go out into the air.
So it is of the Holy Ghost to apply redemption to
the soul ; to lead to repentance, to saving faith in
Christ ; to create the new heart, the principle of
spiritual life. " As many as received Him, to them
gave he power to become the sons of God."
Upon us so constituted, mysteriously and sadly
situated as sinners, come the wonderful and su
pernatural possibilities of grace, neutralizing the
powers of evil. The wintry land becomes a land
of grass and grain, of flowers and fruit. Pleasant
ness and comfort are everywhere; the world is
transformed ; life is victorious. As, day and night
in early spring, the earth is breathed upon by soft
airs and, though weakened and almost dead from
the winter, still revives and renews itself, so in the
springtime of the soul the breath of God passes
over it and it lives. Man is like a closed bud,
which is of no great use until it opens ; but it can
not open of itself. The sun must shine upon it,
warmth and moisture must encircle it, the sap
must penetrate it. Then, stirred and quickened,
it will open. So with man. He cannot quicken
himself. Only in and by the Lord can men know
and care and hope and fear and seek to live aright.
Persons have been in the darkness of unbelief,
have been fortified against the faith, and yet God
has enlightened them, has overcome fear, over
come opinion to the contrary, overcome habit and

THE DIVINE RENEWAL 5 1
disposition. Here is a poor fellow shipwrecked
and thrown upon the sand like a tangle of seaweed
torn from its bed and cast upon the beach after a
storm. If he will but grasp hold of God right by
him he shall be saved. God enters in and is won
derfully renewing to us, the central power in us ;
our supports are in eternal being, and we shall
live forever.
To us who know Him there is only one that can
cure the sickness of the soul and make everlasting
health to be there, who can change the ugly dis
position by a magic touch ; and that one is Christ.
He but touched the maiden with his living hand
and she lived. Prayer brings him, the spell of
evil is broken, the nature is changed, and Christ
is now the incomparable One ; the Christ of the
cross and the grave and the resurrection morning.
He sets us free, he brings us back, he helps us be
and bear and do. He overcomes for us eventu
ally every enemy. Looking to him with repen
tance, with obedience, with expectation, with trust,
we shall never be ashamed. " The Lord is my
strength and my song, and he is become my sal
vation." Divine and human agencies act together in re
newal, but in the order of thought the divine are
the first; yet in reality both sets act together:
the divine efficiency and the human are simulta
neous. That energy which both takes care of

52 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
things and also enables them to take care of
themselves is not far from every one of us. No
star is nearer God, no sun, no highest spot or
grandest on earth, is nearer God than you are.
He is verily acting within you.
This renewal is in various forms. The change
is instantaneous, and yet its manifestations may
be gradual. It takes time for the water-lilies to
rise to the surface of the pond, to spread their
broad leaves and open their big blossoms. It
takes time for the life in the seed to have growth
and fruit. It may take time for the Christian to
get banished all false fear ; time to get all religion
made easy. But the blessed impulse has been
received, and it shall go on until duty changes to
delight. In the case of mature persons we generally see
spiritual life begun by an act of choice, an act of
decision. You must for yourself choose whether
you will serve God, whether you will arise and
follow the Lord. Such a turning, such a reversal
of your life may be clear and distinct. Your con
version is, so to speak, your own act, made at
such a time and in such a way. Many a man
refuses, like Pharaoh and Felix, to do the Lord's
will. Many a man chooses, like Matthew and
Zaccheus and the jailer of Philippi — chooses to
do the Lord's will.
Again, and in the case of immature persons,

THE DIVINE RENEWAL 53
the beginning of the spiritual life, while a radical
and decisive change, is obscure, and the conscious
experiences are different from those of the former
case. There is less of agitation and struggle and
distress. So, also, the different systems of religion under
which one has lived have each an effect upon
the type of conversion, upon the form of the
experience. Again, the type of conversion depends some
what on temperament, somewhat on training. In
short, there is marked variety in the ways by which
persons receive God as their Saviour.
What is common to all types of conversion is
the ceasing to do evil and learning to do well ; is
repentance and faith ; is believing, affectionate ac
ceptance of the offer of salvation ; is taking God
at his word ; is receiving God to rule and to help
and to save in every sense ; is willingness to own
the change, the state, the act ; is association with
those who are of a like faith; is following the
Lord dutifully and thankfully.

CHAPTER VII.
GROWTH IN GRACE.
A LINE of advance is open to all by the pos
session of the divine indwelling. There need be
no standing still, no decaying, no perishing. There
may be a going forward — mind and heart borne
on the river of life : for instance, the fearful even
getting bold, the wavering getting established and
even aggressive ; he who was anxious getting to
exercise a calm trust in the Lord for earthly sup
port or for some cherished project. Religious life
is not as a stake or a stone or a finished crystal.
It is a germ, a sprout, a child's mind ; something
that has a natural growth.
Growth occurs in all life, from creeping lichen
and flowerless moss to every species of grass and
to all the cereals which, multiplied innumerable,
do in harvest cover the earth with their glory ;
we see it in all trees, from the hyssop of the wall
to the cedar of Lebanon. A tree grows in root,
stem, and leaf : the root downward to water and
darkness ; the stem upward to air and light, then
54

GROWTH IN GRACE 55
spreading a leaf or two leaves, and thence mount
ing steadily heavenward until it becomes a sap
ling. The winters shall cherish it in strength and
the springs in growth. Sometimes it is a simple,
leafy stem which thus grows up : a lily-stem, a
stalk of wheat or timothy ; or, higher still, a stalk
of Indian corn ; or, still higher, a tree, a palm, its
unbranched column rising high in the air and
crowned with leaves and fruit. Sometimes it is a
complex stem. Out of the mold, amid fragments
of stone, starts some living thing; it grows and
divides, rises erect above the earth, branching
until we have a small tree ; then a larger; and
then the whole high tree with its round, spread
ing top. We see it on the dividing line of the
farm; we see it on the edge of the woods. So
the person. By successive impulses he has more
and more of life. Through nature and Provi
dence and the Bible and his own activity he has
a larger reception of the Spirit. He is ever
ascending, like a building going up amid bustle
and dust and dirt without. The whole system
of nature illustrates the ascent; certain parables
of our Lord evidence it, as that of the germ, the
blade, the stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear.
There is growth in size. The sun shines, the
winds blow, the rain falls, time passes, and the
tiny plant grows in size and strength unto the
tall and spreading tree conspicuous in the sweep

56 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
of the landscape, or unto the towering tree, like
the pine or hemlock, that rises above the sur
rounding woods. He who has the divine in
dwelling has the whole man rising to a higher
level, like a continent, wide and compact, with
one ocean shore.
There is improvement in quality: the purify
ing, the dropping of what is dead, the leaving
behind what is outgrown ; the passing from Ur
of the Chaldees to Haran, and from Haran to
the Promised Land ; the passing on, like Abra
ham, leaving one altar and setting up another,
leaving Bethel and going to Hebron. There is
the stronger adherence to principle, but less ad
herence to the form of its expression or the letter
of its statement. There is the purifying, extend
ing, exalting of principle ; the giving up of the tab
ernacle for the temple, the Sabbath for the Lord's
day, the ceremonial law for the gospel. There
is, by alterations and transitions, an improvement
in quality. So it is in science and art, in educa
tional theory and practice, in theology and reli
gion. The deeper the piety, the more the trans
formations. The greater the vitality, then the
more elastic the person, and the greater his power
to grow.
As plants strive toward the sun, and in its light
and heat their juices increase, their foliage ex
tends, their branches widen and multiply, so with

GROWTH IN GRACE

57

him who is in Christ. The dew, the rain, the
air and sun, the sap, all in their wonderful pro
cesses make mellow the flinty pear, make sweet
the sharp, sour grape, enrich and make luscious
the fruits of all the trees of all the orchards.
Similarly the Spirit does his gentle work, illu
mining, comforting.
He who was in much driven is now in much
drawn. He to whom religion was in much a
law now has it in much a gospel. He is less
clogged and heavy ; he has come out into the sun
shine; he dwells in the presence of Christ; he
has fresher vision of the Lord. Waves of glory
from the mighty ocean more often flow in, until
for a moment now and then he gazes upon the
unseen glories and realizes their delights. We
read, " Mercy shall be built up forever." Cathe
drals are changed and enlarged from time to
time ; now one part is completed and now an
other, now the work goes on and now it is sus
pended, until at last the whole, perchance, is com
pleted. But the spiritual building is in reality
never done, though always uprising.
Again, there is growth in diversity, variety.
The piety of some is always rudimentary, unde
veloped. It is ever insistent upon two or three
doctrines, two or three experiences, two or three
practices only. But the growing Christian is like
a branching vine. The stock sends a branch

58 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
along the trellis, post after post ; lesser branches
come out, and from these still smaller branches ;
tendrils put forth and seize hold, clusters of leaves
appear, and presently the young fruit is seen. A
tree pushes out from trunk into boughs, these into
branches, these into twigs, these into leaves ; it is
ever division and subdivision. So arises, trunk and
top, the largest forest-tree ; every part in its place
— boughs, branches, and twigs like a great army,
and leaves as common soldiers. So he who is in
the Spirit tends in this direction and in that. He
has more varied thought, more varied feeling; he
is swayed now by one emotion and now by an
other. His beliefs increase in number, and so his
desires. He is like nature, where we behold
mountains and hills, woods and fields, lakes and
streams. He has more virtues than one, more at
tributes than one ; his work ramifies. The circle
of his life widens as the years go by, and the
powers multiply, though the glorious ideal shall
never be real till in paradise ; where one shall
be complete like one of the clover-heads of the
meadow — well rounded, rich in color, standing on
its stem ; where that endless power which rounds
the dewdrop and rounds the sun shall keep us ever
rounded though we be ever growing.
So pregnant, so productive and expansive is
Christian life. Jesus said, " I am come that they
might have life, and that they might have it more

GROWTH IN GRACE 59
abundantly." His kingdom is ever one of pos
session and of increasing possession. Life in God
is not growth and maturity, then decline and
death ; but is ever growth. With the sea it is
surge and sink, surge and sink — one endless rise
and fall of wave since time began. Not so with
believing man. In the vigor of his life he is in a
state of constant growth. The law of his life is
a law of growth. In many ways and for many
days he makes progress, receiving of the heaven
above and earth beneath. At no stage and never
are the spiritual forces spent or wasted. By suc
cessive waves of secret power he is ever being
carried nearer to God; by successive leading is
being brought from lower stages to higher. By
force within and influence without is he ever
passing into something richer, better, and more
gladdening. That which is begun with blessed
commencement is forever being consummated.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE DIVINE ILLUMINATION.
We that are entered into the Spirit have much
to go over when we begin to talk of the one con
tinuous and varied heaven in which we are, as
grace-bearers here and glorified there; all the
gracious and glorious history from the initial il
lumination of each of us to the final ending for
each. All the properties and operations of the
divine indwelling are in much combined, though
we have to consider them separately. Even as
the wind goes about in its circuits, so does the
Spirit in his. In his incessant and multiplied
activity he produces, like the atmosphere, differ
ent kinds of works. Yet the spiritual life has
such a unity that to divide up that life even in
thought has a tendency, unless guarded against,
to destroy the true idea of the life.
I wish to speak of that peculiar and distin
guishing work of God within which we call illu
mination. I want clearly to perceive this in all
its glory. Very impressive is this enlightenment
60

THE DIVINE ILLUMINATION 6 1
as an object of contemplation ; impressive in what
it is and what it does ; as impressive as the amaz
ing splendor and work of the sun in the long
summer-time. Of like vigorous vitality is the
illumination of the Holy Ghost in the vast world
of holy intelligences.
Experimental perception is the root of experi
mental theology and piety. It is illuminated
thoughts which create spiritual feeling and reso
lution. One must see the truth before it can act
upon him. Though he is born into grace all
around and at once, yet, logically speaking, we
conceive of him as seeing before feeling, before
appreciating and appropriating. Action in the
things of salvation is not blind, but seeing; is
not receiving one knows not what, yielding to
one knows not whom ; is not praying and prais
ing and serving in ignorance. There is the Spirit
giving a keen perception of God working in sal
vation, of glorious renewal, of all those things of
the Spirit which are spiritually discerned. Much
does the Bible speak of light shining in upon the
souls of men. Again and again is there reference
to this great experience.
It is as impossible to describe this enlighten
ment as it is to describe any simple, original per
ception of the soul — that of sound, for instance.
One has really to hear to know what sound means.
Light shines and lights up the room, the landscape.

62 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
In the darkness a powerful telescope is directed to
a little shining spot in the sky, collects the rays,
and straightway Jupiter is before us with its belts
and satellites. In light there is something seen.
In natural light we behold all the kingdom of life :
wide in its range, a thousand times greater in all
things than we are aware ; all the beautiful flow
ers of all sorts in all the gardens ; all the forms
and foliage of all the forests ; all the wonderful
things in fields of grass and grain. The rising
sun scatters gloom and darkness; reveals the
earth and gives it splendor; reveals all the ex
tended world, all the great breadths of the land
and of the sea, all the many parts; discovers
every herb and tree, every form and feature of
earth and its great life ; reveals the beautiful
scene of this fair world of existence.
In the light which shines on our fair world I
find a likeness to the blessed light of a world still
fairer. As, when the day is over and the hush of
life has ceased, we in the silence of evening gaze
upward and behold the deep heavens, finding a
multitude of things there we saw not in the day,
so in the Spirit we behold in all its solemn gran
deur that other world. As in the night all the
heavens are seen, all the planets beam down upon
us, all the glittering constellations rise and set, so
likewise is it with the other mysterious heavens.
There is a world within this and beyond it ; far

The divine illumination 63
away, in one sense, from this world, and yet in
every-day connection with it — yes, even sur
rounding it. Learners in earthly lore get know
ledge of all trees and seeds, of all chemistries and
vitalities. There rolls and pours upon the shore
a boundless ocean of knowledge, indescribable,
unspeakable ; never such a kingdom of thought
as to-day in secular knowledge. So the learners
of heavenly lore have treasure ; are rich in wealth
of grace, in mines and quarries, in shops and
looms, in fabrics fine of heavenly things.
Spiritual illumination gives deep sense of the
peculiar gospel facts. It shows no absolutely new
thing, no great truth not found in the Bible. It
is not that degree of illumination which prophets
and apostles had. But it is a wonderful stimulant
for us and makes our riches known. As out of the
valley we rise on the hillside, and, rising still, we
climb the ridge, and at each turn, from one high
place, we see the horizon farther and farther off,
beholding in the clear air the vast landscape near
and far away, seeing the whole strong, calm land,
so, as we rise spiritually, we see the spreading
lands of spiritual life on which shines the sun.
No measure can heap up the wealth of their har
vests, no mind can count the treasure of their
products. God opens himself in nature as behind
the hills, the streams, the lake ; opens himself in
passages of his providence and of his Word. So

64 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
high born are his, to have their eyes opened to
the majesty and love and glory of the Lord, and
to their own high estate in him. They, above all
guesses and reasonings, see the sky deep and
calm. They are open to all the heavens — heart
and eyes to all the wonders of God. So great is
the sweep of the knowledge of the child of the
Lord. It is a knowledge even of eternal things.
As we pass over the sea of this life, sometimes
our boat comes within sight of the heavenly land ;
we see the great mountains rising up, their tops
shining like gold ; and now and then we come
within hail of the shore.
The Spirit teaches us the true doctrine. " He
will teach sinners in the way." They shall not
fail of the way or in the way. Churches widely
separate in place and time, churches free in choice
and judgment, have recognized the true doctrine.
The earlier church perceived and expressed the
truth in a competent form. The church of to
day, with new questions, can perceive the true
doctrine. Deceivers should have no power; nei
ther Cain nor Korah nor Balaam nor all the de
ceivers of all the ages. The truths of the ever
lasting kingdom shall surely be made known ; no
enchantment can prevail against Israel. Ever as
it journeys it may journey in the daytime. Vexed
it may be, but never torn, unless by the coming
out of some wicked one.

THE DIVINE ILLUMINATION 65
It is impossible to deceive the elect ; they shall
have a right sense of all important Scripture.
Many and profitable things are so found in the
Bible that the Christian church has no question
about them and enters into no dispute concern
ing them. Not to accept them is more than
simple error — it is heresy and sin; they are only
hid from the lost. A man can learn sufficient to
live by and to die by ; he can learn that he should
believe, also in whom and in what. These truths
will give him a faith that shall justify him. He
may not learn enough to fill a library, but he
shall learn enough to fill his soul.
This enlightenment is also about questions of
duty as well as of doctrine. General obligations
are easily recognized, but no book is large enough
to contain their possible applications, to tell us of
our duties in detail. We have to take up new
duties, to lay down old ones. God will help us
to know. We shall have spiritual discernment.
Commands, promises, examples, are directions.
As in the course of the circling year contin
gencies occur, now one promise and now an
other shall come to direct us. And sometimes
the Word shall come home with such clearness
and power that we become quite sure of the di
vine will.
This sensibility of the soul is of God. Said
the prophet, " Jehovah shall be to them an ever-

66 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
lasting light." Said the Apostle, " In him are
hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."
He who creates all things in reason and guides
them in wisdom is the everlasting Teacher of his
people. No ministry avails unless God minister
with it. No baptism, no Supper of the Lord
teaches until God touches. When he teaches he
prepares the heart for his teaching : "I by the
Spirit will show you plainly of the Father;"
" Neither knoweth any man the Father, save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
him." Paul speaks of " the spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of him " ; and also of
" the light of the knowledge of the glory of God."
Now is made plain what was doubtful, now is laid
open what was hidden. Now is advance from a
sense which scarcely realizes itself to a deep sense
of spiritual realities.
I turn to the helps to spiritual light. Life is a
help. One must be a hawk to have the telescopic
sight of a hawk ; to know as he does how he sails
and circles and swoops ; to know as he does his
enemies and his food ; to know as he does his
place of nesting and his course of migration. So
one must be a Christian before he can see Christ.
" Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God." And the Apostle says, " Fol
low after holiness, . . . without which no man
shall see the Lord." Jesus said, " Unto you it

THE DIVINE ILLUMINATION 6j
is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom
of God " — this because you are spiritually living,
and not because you are a favored number, not
because intentional secrets exist, not because cer
tain teachings are abstruse. Paul thought that
the Corinthians ought easily to find among them
persons competent to judge in disputes of prop
erty. " The spiritual man judgeth all things " ;
he can look over that which lies below, and com
pare in it one thing with another. " The saints
shall judge the world." They can exercise in its
fullest measure their wonderful discernment.
One, then, must be a living Christian to have
Christian insight.
Another instrumental source of spiritual light
is love. Liking is a great help to learning, taste
to being taught. It is so in music, in painting,
in science. A man likes to study crystals ; their
laws and shapes, their planes and proportions,
their angles and systems. He who enjoys the
splendid form, color, and architecture here is
the one to study here. His liking gives him to
appreciate and see somewhat as God sees. So
love to a man helps to perceive the things of the
man, and love to God to perceive the things of
God. Ever thus the deep of love calls and the
deep of knowledge responds. The loving soul be
comes a lighted soul. " He that loveth me . . .
I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

68 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Love, then, is a glass which helps us to behold
the glory of the Lord. Only in love can we see
into the depths of truth about love. Only in
devotion to God can we understand God.
Another help to light is obedience. It gives
knowledge of experience — a more vivid and thor
ough knowledge than that which is merely theo
retical. The Apostle says, " If any man will do
his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it
be of God; " he shall be in a more willing frame
to learn ; he shall be in a practical way to learn.
" The secret of the Lord is with them that fear
him." From these Scripture statements we also
gather that there is a spiritual law or process ;
that he who honestly purposes to obey God shall
learn of God. " He that followeth me shall not
walk in darkness " — he that would do the very
things I would have him do, and in the very way
I would have him. " The meek will he guide in
judgment, and the meek will he teach his way."
Docility is a help to illumination. One must
be teachable who would truly and well learn to
swim or to row or to ride horseback. These are
arts and accomplishments to do well in which re
quires much careful practice. So if one has
practically injurious notions, is immature, pre
judiced, ignorant about the things of Christ,
teachableness would be a saving trait in that
one's character.

CHAPTER IX.
THE SUBJECTS OF ILLUMINATION.
The light is upon all. The bright sun sends
and forever sends light, and circles with it the
whole earth. The light runs through all the
world, and no telescope has found where light
is not. The inspired poet makes the light a
symbol of God's omnipresence, saying, " He
clothes himself with light as a garment." The
sun which shines on plants and animals and all
the multitude of things is a token of that Sun
which shines on the world of men and angels.
" There is a Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world " ; as God's earthly, so his
heavenly Sun, shining on every one's lot and way.
Most living, most catholic is the divine Spirit;
most broad, never confined within temples made
with hands ; most like the grand and simple light
of day. His light explores every near and dis
tant shore where human beings are ; it streams
and ever shall stream. An atmosphere, an ocean,
is this light ; we are as birds playing in that air, as
69

70 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
ships sailing on that ocean. None but men have
the enlightenment, with all the much blessing it
gives. And whether men receive little or much,
we can say of the Spirit's instructions, as the
psalmist of the heavens, " Their line is gone out
through all the earth, and their words to the end
of the world."
But it belongs especially to the new man to
know of spiritual things ; it is a gift of his nature :
he cannot but learn of Christ, cannot but appre
hend the things which are perfect and forever
refreshing; things without measure or number,
things in which most of all God is praised and
loved. He has awakened into this life even as the
city child awakens in the morning in the country,
out of the deep sleep of the journey, to a glorious
garden land, its skies and slopes, its winds and
perfumes, its very silence. As the flowers open
and turn toward the sun, so opens the Christian
soul to the Sun of Righteousness. Yet the glo
rious circle of unseen things is far too vast for us
to see but here and there within the spaces. As
when in the twilight we wander along the road
side, some things shine and many are hidden, so
here we skirt much of which we know little. Nor
are things uniformly bright, nor is our sunshine
continual. There are variable bright spots and
dark in that unseen world, which yet is so strongly
illuminated.

THE SUBJECTS OF ILLUMINATION Jl
I turn to the whole band of these sons of the
morning. I turn to that fairest and most perfect
object on earth, the spiritual church; in which
were Abraham and Moses, David and the pro
phets ; the church of Christ and Christians. It is
built up of stones the very chief for shining, and
is a very house of light. God's people are a band
of fair illuminated ones in mystic fellowship of
knowledge, having no earthly, but a heavenly,
sun. When to Israel in its wanderings God
would give the assurance of his presence to
guide, it was in a pillar of light. When to the
tabernacle he would betoken his presence, it was
by a shining cloud, a holy light over the ark, the
center of the church, and Israel's oracle of in
struction. In the wilderness all the people en
camped around that Shechinah in order, accord
ing to their tribes. Believers when together are
more than the sum of believers apart. The light
of the whole church is greater than the combined
light of its separate members. And so the church
has an especial communion in the light. The
apostolic writers appeal to the Christians as hav
ing a common spirit of knowledge with the writers,
by which spirit to judge of the truth written; be
ing those " who have an unction from the Holy
One, and know all things."
We now understand how God's people have ex
isted, and his work has gone on, when and where

72 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
there has been no Bible and even no conspicuous
prophet. The church teaches ; she guides to the
source of comfort and liberty, of peace and joy.
In many ages she was practically the Bible, the
only outward light. She has led where her Scrip
tures could not be read, and been, as she is, an
angel of light.
The gifts of knowledge and wisdom are but an
especial enlargement and variety of common illu
mination. They are precious and heavenly work
ings, natural in form ; an energy for all super
intendence and office-work in the church, for
preaching, for dealing with inquirers, for reaching
cases of conscience, for discriminating deceivers
and deceived.
The illumination of prophets, apostles, and
Scripture writers is but a distinct and special
gift of sight, so that they, above all others, are
called seers. An unutterable and glorious gift
was theirs, precious and awful. They stood on
the mountain tops of vision. Peculiar days of
light were those, hallowed in this above all other ;
the highest and the rarest. Those men are like
plants springing up among the grass, that rise
above the things which surround them, and so the
sun shines on them more freety.
But their day has gone by. At the most it
only rose upon a few hundred ; and while recog
nizing their incomparable supremacy, we still ask,

THE SUBJECTS OF ILLUMINATION 73
What are they to the myriads of Israel ? What are
they to all those that are enlightened by the Spirit ?
Our times to theirs seem poor, yet the glory
of this latter day is that revelation is complete,
and so is much better understood ; and that know
ledge is vastly more diffused. The solitude is
never broken by an angel now, nor the noonday
by a light above the sun ; but we have the Bible
and the illuminating Spirit.
Such are the children of light. Their lineage
is a long and bright one. They have seen the
mystery of salvation, the eternal good things.
Only in such knowledge as theirs is all our salva
tion, all our hope and glory. And now we under
stand when we read, " Arise, shine; for thy light
is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon
thee." What witnesses are such to whom in all
the years is given the heavenly vision — given to
see, and to have all the admiration of seeing, the
great love of God arid power of the kingdom!
This is what the holy singer wanted — this divine
knowledge — when he prayed, " Make me to have
truth in the inward parts."
This light, so blessed in this dark world, is the
light of heaven. There is no night there. Those
crowns shall never cease to glisten, those faces fair
to shine ; the sight of the Lord shall never be with
drawn ; on all the radiant glory no shadow shall be
cast. "The Lord is thine everlasting light."

CHAPTER X.
THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ILLUMINATION.
FIRST, spiritual seeing is in harmony with our
natural powers, as much so as is natural seeing.
Within these little orbs, the eyes, all things come
without disturbance. The butterfly and the bee
go flying over the fields, seeing with perfect ease.
In comfort and in luxury we look at the lake, at
the ravine with its stream and rocky sides, and off
at the rich masses of hill and valley and green
earth. So in no way does spiritual seeing affect
our balance, our reasonableness, our common
sense. When we perceive, reason is not dethroned
or placed on one side. He who sees these things
of God by no means antagonizes his reason, is by
no means a fool. This light is as natural as that
of the sun. Yet so it is that sometimes the reason
cannot give its reasons, and we suffer disquiet and
disappointment because that which is believed in
the very soul is to another foolishness. So, also,
in no way does spiritual seeing affect our con
sciousness, creating a frenzy, an ecstasy, a de-
74

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ILLUMINATION 75
lirium. Ordinarily there is not the rapt vision of
some unconscious devotee. Superstition, in its
ever-existing and world-wide parody of religion,
may claim such. But he who has spiritual dis
cernment generally retains his self-control, what
ever his fervor of emotion ; he by no means loses
his senses.
Again, illumination is now mingled with dark
ness even as the early morning has light mixed
with darkness. The light is now pale and gray
and tender. Sometimes the twilight lingers long
between night and day, the quiet shadows hold
ing on, the beautiful day in its full glory hardly
opened as yet. The morning has come before
the night has gone. Sometimes in the path of
duty there is hardly light enough, and we see
giants in the way, "great and grim." It is as
when one climbs a mountain he sees plainly a part
of the way, and a part he does not see. Of some
truths we do not have the right point of view,
and they present but a mass of confused color,
but a misty brightness. Then, again, in the doc
trines, as in nature, light and shade exist together,
and the greater the light the greater the shade.
We have the blazing light of the Trinity, and a
dark shade all around ; so of the incarnation and
so of the atonement : light on the fact, shade on
the explanation. Even the lantern makes the
night around all the darker; the brighter the

76 The divInf indwelling
light the darker the shadow. The bright revela
tions of the Word are surrounded with a darkness
which speculation endeavors in vain to penetrate.
Spiritual vision has not the possibilities the
mystics claim for it, making it reach even to pure
vision. Their teaching is an exaggeration of faith
and has led to various extravagances and curious
forms of religion, to some vicious and loose prac
tices. The history of excessive belief in inner light
is a large and instructive one. Rather than intel
lect, will, and sensibility acting in combination in
religious exercises, and so balancing each other,
regulating each other, in quietism the element
of feeling has acted without the other powers,
and the result has been harm.
Illumination increases and gives wider views.
To one high up miles and miles of country appear,
the hills and hollows of half a county are traced ;
he sees below and around and off over a far-dis
tant prospect, field and wood, hillside and level,
land and water and sky. In the view there is
suggested the wide and vast earth. We have
with the coming dawn the feeling that the day
is coming, with its revelation of all that is un
seen ; that our little isolated lights of the night
shall be no longer necessary ; that we may blow
them out ; that the earth has turned into the sun
once more. The morning light continues and is
strong; it is not swallowed up of the night. It

tHE CHARACTERISTICS OF ILLUMINATION 7?
certainly is victorious. You cannot stop the sun
arising; cannot so bar and close in earth's dark
ness that the sun shall not break through. It
strikes the mountains, it penetrates the valleys,
it covers the plains, it enters the most secluded
recesses of the forest, it spreads until all is filled.
So the inevitable result of this beginning to
know is that you go on to know. This in
amount, as the moon in light passes from quar
ter to half and from half to full. Moses learned
by degrees; so Isaiah. The apostles were not
fully taught, even after three years with Jesus,
nor after Pentecost. Paul increased in know
ledge. Illumination increases and gives clearer
views. You increase in distinctness of know
ledge ; outlines and prominent features but faintly
traced before become decidedly visible. The uni
formity of distance is changed to the multiplicity
and variety of nearness. He who is in the Spirit
tends to be definite and intelligible in what he
believes. The spiritual church holds the great
truths of revelation in simple language ; makes
them, though most mysterious, most definite — so
simple and plain that a child can understand
them. Now, however, we are in the pale light of
morning; the stars still glimmer; our eyes are
still wet with tears, and the land is a land of fogs.
But yet a little and the day shall stream down

78 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
bright, and lo! the sky of heaven. The way
worn have but to go on a little farther, and in a
few hours or on the morrow they shall have
reached a lighted world exceeding fair.
Still unto the last of earth, while some things
shall be clearly seen, others shall be in shadow ;
yet there is a land where we shall see as not here,
if so happy as to enter there — the land of vision.
"At evening-time it shall be light." When the
earthly day is passed and the earthly labor done,
then in the course of nature we expect darkness,
but in the course of grace we have light. And
it shall discover what yet was hidden and make
plain what still was doubtful.
The morning is preeminently free of dust and
turmoil, is preeminently fair. So the deep sig
nificance when Scripture speaks of the morning
of the resurrection, and of heaven as the morn
ing-time. " In the morning it shall be light."
Who shall say what he sees who has ascended
above the region of sense and entered within that
of spirit ; who has received the unspeakable in
heritance and entered into contemplation face to
face with the eternal realities ? One of the love
liest and happiest conceptions of that eternal
world is that we shall walk in the light. " The
Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light."
Such are the characteristics of the great vision
that makes all things radiant to him who sees;

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ILLUMINATION jg
such is the character of that heavenly light by
the influence of which we live in Christ, to per
ceive and appropriate whom is faith and trust.
And now the prophecy and promise is, that if
thou walk in the paths of righteousness, " then
shall thy light break forth as the morning."
The great leader and teacher of to-day is the
Holy Ghost, a master to whom the church was
committed by her Lord. " It is expedient for
you that I go away." "When he, the Spirit of
truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth."
He, the true God, who dwells perpetually with
every believer, has this unique work. It is in
some respects the first of the Spirit's great func
tions in the economy of grace. He helps the
teaching of nature, providence, and the Bible ;
brings things to mind, puts things in a strong
light, increases the discernment. It is light now
upon privilege, or duty, or Scripture. It comes,
we consenting or not. Things that, as it were,
stood black against the night, take on form and
color in this blessed morning light. Such is the
gracious gift added to reason, the Bible, and the
church: the clearer insight, the firmer grasp of
truth; and so the fuller sympathy with all truth
and all lovers of truth, and with Him who is the
Truth.

CHAPTER XL
DIVINE GUIDANCE.
ONE of the manifestations of divine illumina
tion is in leading. Life is a way and needs much
leading : leading in the large and leading in the
little ; leading when on the heights and leading
when in the valleys. And being thus, the Lord
himself comes descending to lead. Not only is
he a guard, he is also a guide. Morning by
morning he leads us as we go out, evening by
evening as we return, and so to the last of earth,
and then he begins anew as our feet begin to tread
the heavenly land.
Sometimes we neglect the divine direction ; we
take a stand, make a move, without carefully
looking to see what God would have us do in
the circumstances. Events show that we have
made a mistake. Certain ways are better than
certain other ways. Yet men think to do with
out God's wisdom, and to go on simply by their
own. Nadab and Abihu would add their strange
fire to that on the Lord's altar. The Levite was
80

DIVINE GUIDANCE 8 1
so concerned for the ark that he steadied it.
Naaman thought he knew a better way than
the prophet's to cure the leprosy. Peter would
thwart the Lord's intent and action to wash
Peter's feet, and would be wiser than the Master.
Certainly it is ours to become acquainted with
these leadings of the Lord. We have but to ap
preciate and appropriate the directing work of
God. Here is one of the believer's privileges;
one of the sacred mysteries ; a part of the realism
of the heavenly kingdom ; a spiritual, habitual,
guiding illumination. It is a delightful doctrine
for every one who is in the divine life. There
are matters in which we are wise to wait upon
God for direction, and here comes in this special
experience in redemption.
In certain circumstances guidance is absolutely
necessary. He who goes here and there in the
chambers of Mammoth Cave without a guide
must finally lie down and die, lost forever to all
the upper world of light and life. The ship out
of its reckoning sees a certain light on the coast,
and the despairing crew is safe again : that
piercing light going far and wide out to sea
guides and saves the darkened vessel. Now,
spiritually, man is in danger — danger of losing
his soul. He needs divine wisdom to help him.
In other cases guidance is quite essential. In
journeyings we must always know the way,

82 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
whether we go by sea or land, on foot or by rail.
Nothing will take the place of that — good health,
money, pleasant weather, nothing. So is it in
religious, and, indeed, in all life. We pursue
our way over hill and valley : sometimes the path
is clear, sometimes it is faint, and sometimes we
lose it altogether ; and yet we need never be at
fault, for the Lord is our guide. We must never
separate him from our daily life, but in childlike
simplicity let him share it with us. Many things
which we cannot discover he will discover. He
will ever help us to find our way ; he meets this
need, gives this privilege. With him in us we
have his counsels of direction; we have the
Wonderful, the Counselor ; we can remove diffi
culties ; we can sometimes work marvels. Our
partner is very wise. Certainly mistakes and
errors and wanderings can be avoided. Such
evils in God's people are because they have
failed to hear or to heed his voice. Wherever
human force is accompanied by human intelli
gence it may be by divine, by His whose wisdom
is in all the various creatures and their activity,
in all the frame of things and their movements.
" There is a spirit in man : and the inspiration of
the Almighty giveth them understanding."
In many another situation this guidance is very
desirable. Evidently we are not wise enough of
ourselves to pass with safety, with comfort and

DIVINE GUIDANCE 83
success, through such a world as this. We need
light and leading from above. The right thing
and the wise are often hidden ; what is coming
is always hidden. We are thoughtless, preen-
gaged, not cool enough; we need one who looks
farther ahead and farther around than we do ;
and in God's cooperation with us we have just
such a provision made. Ours is quite his posi
tion who gives himself over to the church, the
priest, the pope, for guidance. So doing with
God, we shall ever sooner or later hear the
words, "This is the way." So efficacious is the
leading that it brings us out of all doubt and ir
resolution, out of all confusion. We are led to
what is right and what is wise. The divine mind
is with us. There are great possibilities revealed
in the Scriptures concerning divine leading.
In every case, " Commit thy way unto the Lord,
and he will direct thy paths." Direct by his word,
by his general providence, by especial providence ;
direct in the great paths, the place to live in, the
means of livelihood, the course to pursue ; direct
in the little paths, the special errand, the least
things of life.
This leading is brought out in the Twenty-
third Psalm, where the shepherd leads his flock.
Calm and confident, he leads in ways they do not
stumble in or wander from, and where plenty is.
His arm is strong and his feet swift. He rises in

84 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
his strength, and his fair face shines as he leads
his own. None that will be led, whether in dan
ger or astray, but may follow him. Day by day,
hour by hour, he goes before. We need not
number or measure our difficulties, and least of
all fall before them. And he will never lay aside
his leading us in this world until we leave it.
We read in Isaiah, " He that hath mercy on
them shall lead them, even by the springs of water
shall he guide them." It is a story of the desert.
He shall lead them away from the loose and
scorching, bare and barren sands, unto springs
and running waters among trees and palms ; lead
them out of the suffocating valleys and from amid
the walls of heated sand ; lead them, now blown
upon by fiery winds, and now under the pouring
heat of the sun, no rest for the eye amid the
glare, "little to eat and less to drink." To one
so situated it is a cheerful sight to see a green
patch near the horizon ; then to reach green till
age, groves and waters, wells and buckets ; where
it is his, like dead, to drink, to fling himself along
side some tree-trunk and to repose in the shade.
A steamer approaches the New York Narrows
from the open sea and takes on a pilot, though
the harbor is in plain sight and the water smooth,
or if it be night and a stiff breeze be blowing.
In any event, the ship surely stops long enough
to pick up a pilot. And now every one must

DIVINE GUIDANCE 85
mind him. If he directs to steer for the outside
passage or the inshore passage, to look out for
ward, to heave the lead, to stop, to go forward
at half speed, so it must all be done. Only in
consideration of all this does he undertake to
carry that vessel to its berth. So the Bible says,
" The steps of a good man are ordered by the
Lord; " his steps when alone, his steps when
with others ; his steps in work, his steps in rest
from work.
And now what is this leading? It is God in
one as his guide ; God putting himself forth for
this one, acting before him and in him. As a
vine creeps along frame or fence or tree, and its
direction is the direction of that to which it holds,
so the Christian rests upon and clings to and fol
lows the Lord.
In the Psalms we read, " He leadeth me in the
paths of righteousness; " not all over the world,
but in paths ; not abroad in a wilderness, ridged
like the wild sea, but in paths. I may toil slowly,
be in sunshine or in shadow — I am in the path.
When I raise my eyes I may not see much be
yond, not much near or in the distance, but I am
in the path and he is leading me. In his leading
in the path he is like a lantern in the dark, to
make our way plain to us. He who is " great
in counsel " will help us to do or say what is fit
ting, will help to manage any business or avert

86 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
any evil. In the great and terrible wilderness of
old, storms of sand clouded and bewildered, rep
tiles stung unto the death, men pined with hun
ger and thirst. Still God " guided his people in
the wilderness like a flock." Over and over it is
alluded to by psalmist and prophet, and to-day
it is over all the earth, and a part of the gospel
for all mankind. On account of these paths the
prayers of Scripture and the prayers of all saints
are at times for the divine leading, and the praises
of Scripture and the praises of all saints are at
times because of it.
And this leading is suited to each. To climb
the Alps needs one kind of a guide, to track the
desert another, to sail the sea another, to lead a
soul another, and to lead one's own life still an
other. Then, too, he ever leads aright; in the storm
aright, in the waters aright, in the dark aright ;
whether the way be in sunshine or in shadow,
whether easy to understand or hard, still aright ;
whether by strange and crooked and zigzag paths,
still aright. Sometimes the way shines clear, like
a silver stream ; and sometimes it has to be picked
out step by step, through bushes and grass and
creeping things. But whether down in the val
leys or over the hills, whether in green grass or
through the thick woods, in all our goings he
leads aright. We may be in a strange path, in

DIVINE GUIDANCE 87
the night with the moon down, but we need
dread neither man nor beast, nor to get lost ; we
may be weary in body and sad in soul, having to
go on and on, but One goes before with a golden
lamp in his hand to light us on our way. And
so it is ever with us as we get into darkness : the
obscurity and gloom are irradiated; we are sim
ply to follow the Lord whithersoever he leadeth,
and though his way may be in the sea he is to be
trusted, and wonderful shall be the surprise in the
end. We read, " This God is our God forever and
ever: he will be our guide even unto death."
This leading is even unto the end. Down even
to old age is the word trustworthy ; down even
into the death- valley is it true ; " Thou art with
me." The dying members of Christ pass away
in their great peace because of their great light ;
they say, " Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace : for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation." Multitudes of whom earth retains no
trace — aught more than of the flowers that spring
in the valleys — have walked in the light, and, by
the vision led, gone over to the bright land. He
leadeth me ! I feel it, I love it, and the spirit of
it is a daily comfort.
I turn to the scope of the leading. It influ
ences perception and judgment as to what is good
or bad in itself, does it with or without means.

88 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
It exercises the same influence in matters secu
lar, prudential, trivial ; gives discrimination in im
pulses, providences, counsel ; gives a better judg
ment by giving a better heart. The Lord will
lead us in everything. He will lead as to place :
Abraham was called to leave his native land. He
will lead as to general calling : Matthew was called
from the seat of custom to be an apostle. He will
lead as to time : if you are to persuade one, or
are to do a difficult thing, look attentively for the
signal when. So our Saviour did in the matter
of offering himself up. On the one hand you are
not to run before, or on the other to lag behind,
but ever to move exactly with God. Thus doing,
you shall have as little as possible of weariness
and disappointment; shall have as much as pos
sible of joy and success. The Lord leads as to
manner. So we follow the guide; follow un
hesitatingly, cheerfully, cordially ; move when he
moves and stop when he stops. The Lord sees
for us in little matters and in large ; he leads to
just those people and counsels and ways that suit
our occasion and necessity.
Let me remark that guidance has its limita
tions : there is an imaginary guidance.
No guidance can clash with reason, can contra
dict it — either its beliefs or its logic. No man
can or must escape these. They are irresistible,

DIVINE GUIDANCE 89
and no man can be divinely guided to doubt them
or go against them.
No guidance can clash with our radical moral
convictions : as that God is good and sin is bad,
as that we are to be just and good. There is no
guidance that permits wrong.
No guidance can clash with the Bible, can
contradict it. Truth cannot be inconsistent, con
tradictory. What the Bible justifies we must
justify; what the Bible condemns we must con
demn. There is no direction against using the
means of grace, or to shut out most of the pro
cesses and activities of Christian life, and pas
sively wait for the Holy Ghost.
Guidance is not absolute. Time may be re
quired to give it. We are told to grow in know
ledge. Again, infirmities affect apprehension, af
fection, and judgment; create error and mistake.
Paul apologized to the Council. He and Barnabas
differed in view. For some cause the Christian
Jews had not the light of the Christian Gentiles.
A weak conscience, a feeble faith, little discern
ment, lessen the power to receive the leading.

CHAPTER XII.
HELPS TO GUIDANCE.
There are external helps to guidance, a num
ber of distinct ways by which the divine counsel
is made known. Nature is one way. Natural
laws direct us even as they direct moving seas
and flowing streams, even as they guide the wild
goose, the swallow, and every migratory bird in
their appointed times and various ways. Our
sex, our age, our occupation, direct us. Natural
constitution directs us to home and industry and
society. Nature, talent, taste, often tell what we
are fit for.
Providence is a guide. Various providences
made it clear to Jacob to move his family into
Egypt. The situation of certain churches led
Paul to write certain epistles. Opportunities
providentially occur; ways providentially open,
other ways are providentially closed. Here, then,
is another inlet of knowledge. Yet God some
times has his way in the sea ; providences do not
indicate his mind. The prosperity of the wicked,
90

HELPS TO GUIDANCE 91
the adversity of the good, are in a sense provi
dential. The early church seemed in much to
have against it what we call providences.
Again, others are a guide. One's own experi
ence is good, but that of two is better, and that
of a larger number is better still. Hence the
value of counsel, the value of the church, the
value of books. The wider the range of expe
rience the surer are the generalizations. The
world is wiser than any one man in the world.
Knowledge, like the land, is very wide. One
man has not been everywhere. Persons, by re
fusing advice, by keeping above teaching, tend
to become empty and powerless, tend to become
boastful and imperious, fanatical and denuncia
tory, and sometimes make complete shipwreck.
Such are some enthusiasts, some dupes and de
luded persons.
To an extent, also, public opinion may often
be heeded as God's guide and guard for us.
Wherefore if you would know what you ought
to be or do, ask others in whom you can confide.
Take counsel. They are cool and disinterested
and yet friendly. Go slow in going against their
judgment. At times a man is a fool who will
not be advised by his best friends, but will go
on according to some whim, some scruple of duty.
He is weak where he may think that he is espe
cially strong.

92 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
We are not, however, to make others entirely
our directors — the people of our party or church
— and live at their dictation, surrendering convic
tion, conscience, and manhood. The Bereans did
not blindly accept even an apostle's teaching, but
searched the Scriptures, " whether these things
were so." The opinions and feelings, the habits
of others are by no means to be absolute guides
for us. We encounter many timid or feeble per
sons, some who are ignorant or foolish or un
sympathetic. Their criticism is not to be our
direction. The indolent cannot, for example, ad
vise the energetic, or the cowardly the coura
geous. While a modest man will listen to advice,
the prophets and even our Lord did not always
take it. It is evident that a man must believe
somewhat in himself, in his own power to see and
judge. Every man, also, knows himself and his
situation best, or ought to.
Sometimes our moods are a guide. If one
is not in the mood, perhaps he should not at
tempt certain things. The heart affects the head.
Does not a prayerful mood indicate prayer, and
a thankful mood indicate praise? Here, then, is
another sense by which we learn. Consult some
what your frame of mind, though not simply this
by any means. But if you feel cowardly you can
not very well do a brave deed ; if cold you cannot
very well do a feeling thing. About some duties

HELPS TO GUIDANCE 93
try to catch yourself when you feel like it, and
you will be sensible.
Again, instinct sometimes guides us. There
is a sensitive state of soul that helps to a cor
rect judgment about a person's character or his
intention, or about a situation; or a young per
son instinctively takes a certain right course and
avoids a certain wrong one. Sometimes we are
moved to a person, a way, a movement, as the
eagle is moved to the cliff or the swallow to the
barn. So, also, sometimes the Spirit acts directly, acts
without messengers or an outer voice, but by an
inner, after other methods fail or even when they
are not tried. One may be urged from within to
go back or to go on ; to turn to the right hand or
to the left. The divine choice is indicated by a
mental pressure, the impulse seemingly one's own
and yet another's. This way — that of immediate
suggestion — has come with the experience or
observation of believers. It is an irregular and
mysterious prompting to do or to avoid doing;
it is a perception. Peter perceived in Cornelius
a saint, and in Simon Magus a child of the devil.
The interference is self-evident, or the event jus
tifies it; or a sense of divine approval with the
thought of yielding, and of disapproval with the
thought of not yielding. Sometimes probability
grows faint, still the assurance continues. So the

94 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
observant person watches for impressions, for even
here may be a revealing of God.
But impressions are very fallible, very liable to
error. With only them one might easily make
grave mistakes ; might become a false teacher
and guide ; might get to do much as he pleased ;
might come to think less of Bible and church and
more of his own experience. He might be es
pecially hard to correct, to convince. Such per
sons are especially immovable if in error, and in
corrigible if in misconduct. We are to " try the
spirits." We must examine whether these things
are so. Search the Scriptures as did the men of
Berea. Impressions are very liable to abuse.
Many are the melancholy instances of this. One
is not to be led by mere sights and sounds, by
strange and momentary feelings. These may
come from disordered nerves or by contagion
from other persons. One line of evidence is as
follows : true impulses rather restrain agitation ;
they call into play perception and reflection : we
pause and think, we read the Bible, we take
Christian counsel, we watch providence. True
impulse permits to give time and attention to
itself — time, at least, to pray. " He that be-
lieveth shall not make haste."
In conclusion, so we may say, as said George
Fox, " Thus traveled I in the Lord's service as
he led me on." There are ways by which, amid

HELPS TO GUIDANCE 95
the great play and confusion of things, we may
adjust ourselves.
I turn to the conditions of guidance. One
is study. It is a part of our probation to learn
even our duties and privileges by study. It is
a spiritual art, this of the conduct and enjoy
ment of life. It is a spiritual art to find the di
vine direction; and art is acquired by study and
practice. " Then shall ye know, if ye follow on
to know the Lord." Here is a ship approach
ing the coast. The officer of the deck traces the
lights, he takes the soundings, and so he correctly
tracks his way in the trackless sea. Here is an
expedition to the Arctic regions. The men in
charge study maps and charts; study currents
and tides and drifts; study ice and the means of
travel upon ice. A similar attention is necessary
in moral and spiritual life, and a similar security
and correctness of course accompanies such atten
tion. Another condition is watchfulness. The hunter,
regardful of what experience has taught him, is
observant. Be it cold or wind or rain or fair
weather, he is watching. So do you watch for
the divine leading.
Sometimes, too, you are to wait. " Rest in the
Lord, and wait patiently for him." You may
need time to take the matter into more careful
consideration. Or perhaps things must settle, or

96 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
your own mind must settle, or a certain way
must be prepared.
Another condition is trust for the leading. We
must keep sensitive to the Spirit, and trust him
to lead us when and where he will. By trust
comes receptivity to guidance. We must refer
our lot to God to have him establish it ; our doc
trine and our duty to have him make them clear ;
our works to do them in and for him ; and in
this trust we shall have him with us. Not a
stream we shall meet but there shall be a boat to
carry us across. Awake or asleep, trust him from
whom you are never parted. A steamer may be
in the midst of the sea, the wide waste of swelling
waters in every direction, yet that steamer's pas
sengers are in good spirits. Nothing whatever is
in sight but the sky above and the water around,
yet the vessel cuts through the water in glorious
style. The crew take watch and watch about.
The compass and the observations taken are
trusted by the officers, and in turn the officers
are trusted by the passengers. In climbing the
high Alps one takes a guide ; he does not go
rambling by himself, following up this ridge or
climbing that rock. No, he just follows on. The
top of the mountain may be out of sight most of
the way, yet the guide is trusted. So, " Trust in
the Lord with all thine heart ; and lean not unto
thine own understanding." We must feel that

HELPS TO GUIDANCE 97
God is watching over us, even though for a sea
son we do not hear from him. Nor should we
distrust any light we do receive should it be
against what we had supposed would be the
light, would be the truth or the way, the duty
or the privilege. Had the builders of Babel
trusted to the divine direction they would never
have been led to commit the great folly they did
and make the great failure they made.
Another condition is prayer. " If any man lack
wisdom, let him ask of God." " No man," says
Emerson, " ever prayed heartily without learning
something." Prayer brings one into a docile
frame of mind, and prayer brings the guiding
Spirit. You pray that the Bible or a providence
or a friend may guide you. The psalmist prayed,
" Show me thy ways, O Lord ; teach me thy
paths." Paul prayed that God would give unto
the Ephesians the spirit of wisdom. Action may
seem closed, resources exhausted : you must go
to God. Tell him that you do not know what
to do ; look up with faith and expectation.
Fulfilling these conditions our course is like a
river. Sometimes the river is walled up on either
side; again, the walls spread out and inclose a
large space, and we are able to see the windings
and direction for some distance. All along it is
ours to say, "Thou shalt guide me with thy
counsel, and afterward receive me to glory."

CHAPTER XIII.
THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE.
When the Lord appears, there is an opening,
a lifting up, a widening of the gates ; a removal
of hindrance, limitation, and restraint. The spir
itual person has very especial freedoms. His
originality would lead us to expect this, his posi-
tiveness, his continual yea, his continual stretch
ing above and beyond, his going on to fullest
development in every direction.
And so, indeed, it is : we are " called unto lib
erty " with all its flourishing life. " Where the
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty:" in that
person or place or time ; in that act of prayer or
speaking or preaching or counseling. Christ says,
" If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free
indeed." Even as little birds escape their ene
mies by frequenting stone walls and low bushes
by the roadside, so do Christians escape by hid
ing in the Lord. The children are free in many
senses :
There is freedom from disbelief in spiritual
realities. We have " the evidence of things not
98

THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE 99
seen " ; in our faith our ideals are seen to be real :
as though a soul were breathed into the perfect
statue; as though eternal realities were behind
the paintings hung by imagination on the walls
of the soul. We are of a free nation and we have
power to see.
There is freedom from ignorance, for we are
illuminated. Though often knowing but little,
and needing to pray to Him who is the Light of
the world, yet we have knowledge and wisdom.
Ours is no zigzag course, no stop, and no retreat,
but a constant advance, like that of a planet round
the sun. There is freedom from gross error and
mistake. The way is laid out for us.
There is freedom from discomfort and discon-
solateness, for we have the comforts and consola
tions of the Holy Ghost. Our life is really rooted
not in the earthly, but in the heavenly. Our
human unfolding is accompanied by a spiritual
unfolding and a divine manifestation. The Spirit
takes the things of Christ and shows them unto
us. He is our Comforter. Christ has done much
to free the world of sorrow.
There is freedom from the law as the rule of
our standing with God, and as the way of eternal
life. There is an entrance into the life of faith,
the life of the saved ; a life in the mercy of God,
a life in union with God. Faith is the surest and
nearest way to heaven for such as we.

IOO THE DIVINE INDWELLING
There is freedom from the bitterness of sin —
its uneasiness, discomfort, self-contempt, remorse,
misery. The contention is all ended, the confu
sion, the despondency, the alarm, the spirit of
heaviness. Christ has done his work, and the
person is in this sense " free from sin."
There is freedom from the binding power of
sin, " the law of sin," its absolute bondage; there
is redemption here. The Spirit supports a life
where goodness is dominant. To such measure
of spiritual glory has one come. Sometimes be
setting sin tears us from our holding and casts us
adrift on the open sea. Now when appetite or
desire rages, then for strength to cling to the
naked rock and stand the fury of storm and break
ers. The strength is in him who sets free from
the law of sin and death ; is in his keeping us
watchful, prayerful, and in the use of all the
means of grace. " Whosoever abideth in him
sinneth not ; " sin is not his habit, his dispo
sition. There is freedom from legality. There is an
instinctive, a self-moving impulse, the impulse
of an inward life. The Epistle to the Galatians
clearly, emphatically sets forth the liberty of the
gospel in contrast to the slavery of the law;
clearly shows that the gospel attitude of soul
in the matter of obedience is freedom — not free
dom from obedience, but freedom in obedience.

THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE IOI
This is freedom from friction and tension in obe
dience. It is like the sun shining on the cold,
wet soil, sweetening and warming it ; making it
elastic. So the Spirit shines in upon the soul,
and the old state is known no more. In our
evil self is it that " strait is the gate, and narrow
is the way, that leadeth unto life " ; but in our
good self all this is changed. The waves of the
lake follow and follow with no effort; the cur
rent of the river sweeps quietly onward. The
person naturally, rejoicingly observes the law,
there being no bondage whatever. The com
mand is not arbitrarily imposed or painfully re
ceived, but willingly, even with desire and de
light. So lives he who lives the life according to
the Spirit.
There is law, and very much of it. You are not
free of certain laws of health or home or social
life or state or church : this is to be a planet off
its axis, or out of its course, running wild. The
crystal must keep its shape, the jewel its struc
ture. There is in this liberty no exemption from
truth or honesty, purity, or any other morality ;
no exemption from prayer, reading the Bible, and
the public ordinances of religion : piety consist
ing in mere contemplation, or in passively wait
ing for the Holy Ghost. There is no emanci
pation from righteous law, though it has ceased
to be a foreign law, a command only ; one from

102 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
without and disliked ; a constraint. It has be
come a force within ; the seeming harshness and
severity are gone. One instinctively, spontane
ously goes and comes, does this or that. He is
asked and he is willing; freely and with enjoy
ment he consents. His being goes forth with a
free energy, a whole-hearted devotion.
We are toward God as children to a parent.
Our spirit is not that of the bondsman, one of
fear ; not that of the hired servant, one of service
for pay ; but that of the child and the heir, that
of the wife for the husband, that of the husband
for the wife. We are under no yoke. We are
in a family relationship : " no more servants, but
sons." The only bond is a bond of love; duty
is not a trial but a pleasure.
We are also free from legality in compensat
ing God. We are free to bear his name; free
to receive his protection and support; free to
receive, with no obligation to give an equivalent
in return. We take all that God gives ; and with
no more embarrassment than a child has in re
ceiving a new dress from its mother. It is not
a matter as between strangers or acquaintances.
Further, there is freedom from anxiety about
things which cannot be helped : about one's life
or health or estate or good name or success or
support ; or about one's family or church or land.
We cannot go beyond our strength to alter mat-

THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE 103
ters. We do not attempt the impossible, do not
fight the whole system of things. We leave this
battle to God. And so we are free from restless
ness, brooding, the unhappy stirring up of our
selves. One does what he can and does not
worry. We have fearful states of Nature : her power
to destroy is realized and dreaded. We have
her fearful cold ; her awful, sultry heat ; her
earthquakes, tempests, floods, and droughts. We
have human events : war, pestilence, prevailing
sickness, the death of -friends. Now is the time
to trust the Lord. The Arabian shepherds have
towers of refuge from robbers, and when in dan
ger climb by a rope to a door half-way up the
tower and then draw up the rope. No maraud
ing Arab then can scale that wall. So the be
liever has a high tower.
You have the cares of an invalid, of a house
hold, of some work, laid on you. As each thorn-
bush catches a bit of wool from the sheep that
passes, so does each care snatch something from
you ; every trouble takes a nip. You are an
noyed by things that catch on. You are like the
sheep the farmer turns into a foul clearing. The
wool gets ragged, gets spotted with every seed
that by prickles or hooks can attach itself. You
have a living to get, and perhaps at odds. Your
fields are not always productive or your trees

104 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
fruitful; the seasons vary with the years. Still
industry can make an Eden out of a desert; can
produce in the wilderness neat spots of garden
and field, choice roots and grasses, grains and
fruits. With skill you find the skies your reser
voir; every element a help — heat and cold, wet
and dry, soil and air. " If God so clothe the
grass of the field, . . shall he not much more
clothe you?" Let him possess you, and you
shall be like the light-winged bird to live in the
air, to get above the dreary and even dismal
worry ; you shall quit that dark and cheerless
round, and circle in the sky.
So there is some freedom from wear and tear
and care. One is no slave, no vassal to such ; he
bears high his head in their presence. By inher
itance and by possession he is lord ; and he flings
off all such who attempt to lord it over him. The
wild grape-vine lies along the ground, rears and
climbs with twisting form the high trees, swings
from limb to limb, even from tree to tree, and in
its great vigor is free of blast or mildew, of wind
or winter's cold, of bug or slug or rooting hog.
So luxuriant and free is the Christian. If under
attack, he defends his case or he leaves it to the
great Defender; if overcome, the suffering is
borne in the joy and peace of salvation.
Thus the Christian sits under his own vine and
fig-tree and no one makes him afraid. He has

THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE 105
spiritual liberty ; his bonds are broken ; his ene
mies and oppressors have gone forever. • This
is "the opening of the prison to them that are
bound." Here is the night all round us, a great
black wall about us; we hemmed in on every
side, isolated; all is lost to sight. Freedom is
the daylight. Here is winter, snow stretching
away to an unknown extent, a thousand miles
perhaps. An arctic continent, not a single
flower, the water frozen, the earth frozen, the
cold severe ; all life imprisoned, locked up. Now
we cross the narrow but deep chasm of spring,
and nature is liberated, her chains are all broken
off, the waters are open, the fields thawed and
fertile and green, the flowers spreading their
cups and their beauties, and summer stretching
far away, eastward and westward. So is it with
the life in the Spirit. Those in this escape all
slaveries. They are emancipated, for the year
of jubilee is come. All rigid bondage is over;
a free, animated, glowing life is theirs. God's
people are a free people. Such is the power of
the divine indwelling; such the deliverance of
God's perfect love ; such is salvation. Such is
the felicity of myself, of my friends in the Lord,
of the whole Christian communion.
Positively, this freedom is the freedom of the
highest life. As life grows substantial and worthy,
it grows in liberty of choice. As life grows from

106 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the crystal to the plant, from the plant to the
animal, from the animal to the man, and from
man natural to man spiritual, there is an ever-in
creasing expression of liberty. The life of thought
and feeling is freer than that of all the plants and
flowers which diversify the landscape ; than that
of all the sensitive animal kingdoms of fish or
bird or quadruped. There is in the Spirit the
full possession of one's own self and of the Spirit
himself. Very wide is the range. One is free
for guidance and comfort, truth, hope, and love ;
free to pray and praise and serve. The young
and some of the old delight in shows and spec
tacles and the whole circle of public exhibitions.
With pleasure the traveler views the magnificent
ice-plains of the Alps, the snowy ranges, the peaks
everywhere. So he who is in God has a vision
near at hand and a glimpse now and then afar of
scenes and objects of delight. His is " the liberty
of the glory of the sons of God."
We know that the lower laws that enter higher
spheres are frequently feebler there ; the laws
of physics in chemistry, the laws of chemistry in
organic life. Competition, so active among the
animals, is far less active among men, being con
ditioned by justice, brotherhood, humanity. In
creasing life has increasing power over the lower
life accompanying. There is a displacement, a
neutralizing the lower forces in presence of the

THE INDWELLING MAKES FREE 1 07
higher. Among freemen many restraints cease to
exist — not that there is transgression of the law,
but the law is in part taken away. Of course
truth and justice and honor are never violated ;
yet many a gate is unlocked.
By a kind of play the spirit in the germ of a
plant seizes of air and water and earth, and builds
and shapes its own chosen plant. And the plant
in its full power takes of that which shall make
substance delicate, and color blue or yellow, and
shapes its own chosen blossom. Similarly is it
that he who is in the Spirit reaches at last to the
freedom of play — I do not mean levity, the mere
caprice of fancy, life but a making merry, the
Christian a mere thistle-down, a brilliant butter
fly most wonderfully gotten up in colors and spots
and stripes, fluttering in splendor from flower-
cup to flower-cup, seeking ever its own pleasure.
I mean more than those recreations which are but
as the decorations and adornments of life. In the
processes of nature and grace one reaches a play-
impulse deep down, one of our possibilities and
glories. It is to go after a free fashion, to have
great power to pass up and down, to be so free
that only the sovereign and supreme laws are
over one.
" In my Father's house are many mansions."
In a sense no door there is ever shut. The spir
itual world is eminently a free world ; it permits

lo8 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
a coming in from all directions and a going out
in all directions. "The city lieth foursquare," and
on each side are three gates. The service of God
is a free service; the praise, the fellowship, the
going and coming. It is all like the rising mists
from lake and valley under the morning sun ; like
the clouds slowly floating across the blue sky.
There is in it a spontaneous impulse like that of
the bird in the early morning or in the evening
twilight, perched on the topmost branch of some
tall tree and pouring out some delightful melody.
He who is filled with the divine indwelling is
in freedom, as at a festival or on a holiday ;
elastic is he, with ever a play of thought and
imagination, a freshness of feeling. He is like
the painter in his inspiration, pure of eye, free
of hand, wide of range, to plot earth's forms and
strike on her colors. He is within the gates of
the city of life, where the holy feet go and re
turn at will in perpetual festival. We have the
winds of all seas and coasts and lands, blowing
from every quarter and through all regions of
the air, now in gentle zephyrs, now in gales and
whirlwinds ; moving the sands of the shore and
the desert; drifting the dust of city street and
country road, freely do they sweep back and
forth over the earth. So freely, though not so
aimlessly, come and go the thoughts and feel
ings, the states and activities of believers.

The indwelling makes free 109
There is a swing and a beauty in the great
planets going over their immense ranges in space,
diffusing light and splendor as they roll. Now
here are other heavenly bodies which have a like
freedom and beauty of swing. Persons that are
freer than the rolling waters, freer than the wav
ing grain-fields ; free like light and heat and elec
tricity. Nor gas, nor smoke, nor cloud is any
other than a rudimentary emblem of the freedom
of a spiritual person. The crawling worm, the
aimless butterfly, the balanced hawk, are not so
free as he; when we shall cease to be subject
to certain great natural ordinances that waste
and cause fatigue and distress, stagnation and
death; when in the eternal life and out of the
temporal our deliverance from the evil of the
temporal shall be complete, and our entrance
into the good of it shall also be complete.

CHAPTER XIV.
GOD IN US COMFORTS.
THE great God of old, he who made the sun,
moon, and stars, the God of to-day, is our refuge,
a very present help in time of trouble. He is the
friend of all, great or little, wise or foolish, rich or
poor. No burden but he will help carry. Of him
it is true that the government is on his shoulder.
He bears our sicknesses and sorrows, our cares
and even our sins. Many persons have in him
found a resting-place in every kind of drift ; have
in him stood unmoved in every kind of shock.
" Trust ye in the Lord forever : for in the Lord
Jehovah is everlasting strength."
Another stream comes down from the moun
tain, in this divine helpfulness in trouble. The
God of nature puts some roots of the desert so
deep down that they do not feel the scorching
sun, and has formed them with tubers to hold in
store moisture and nutriment in the long droughts.
So may it be with you. There is a plant in the
South African desert : the stalk of the plant is
small and the leaf narrow ; but below the surface
no

GOD IN US COMFORTS in
the plant has a great tuber filled with fluid that
nourishes the plant or refreshes him who finds
it. Even so in sorrow we are to go down to the
larger life, that of the living God within us. Said
the psalmist, " My flesh and my heart faileth :
but God is the strength of my heart, and my por
tion forever." In our difficulties, infirmities, dis
appointments, sorrows, desolations, we must ap
prehend and -appropriate the living God as our
strength and our deliverer. He helps us more
than does nature or time or human sympathy;
he is a mighty God for feeble souls ; he reaches
the tears and the heart-break ; he makes sad eyes
to shine again. It was in trouble and darkness
that Jacob had his vision of the angels of light.
It was when his home and hope were gone that
the heavens opened and their inhabitants came
down. So also with us may it be when we are
weary and in feebleness, when we stumble or
stop or go along a stony way painfully. Oh, these
mighty works of Jesus, redeeming from all evil !
Christ is as rivers of water in a dry place, in
a barren, desolate place ; no moisture, almost
no soil, rocks and sand. His soothing, inspiring
influence comes full and abundant ; this when you
walk in very gloomy places ; this when you are
in pain or infirmity or affliction. He says, " Be
cause I live, ye shall live also." He whose heart
is very tender and whose knowledge is very great

112 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
— he is your helper. You are in a dreadful desert.
The hills are in the distance ; as yet you can dis
tinguish neither village, field, nor forest; but
travel on, and the whole hill-country, the whole
mountain land, shall open up with flocks and herds
and human habitations. You see through a glass
darkly. This is affliction, and in it you must go
to the God of all comfort. In the Lord you are
to abide and wait. He is your helper here.
" His oath, his covenant, his blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.''
One says, " By thee have I been holden up
from the womb." The climbing plants with
their delicate stems have no self-support, yet
often they carry themselves very high, because
they take hold of some tree or wall of building,
and, holding fast, they grow. Tropical plants
will climb to the top of the tallest trees of the
forest, so will the wild grape-vine of our woods ;
and there expand in the sunshine; so the Chris
tian. In all our sorrowing we have a sympathy of
which we are too ignorant ; we have a consola
tion not of sentiment — the mere intoxication of
an hour — but rational and substantial. These
deep things of suffering lead us to the deep

GOD IN US COMFORTS 113
things of God. In him the tears under our eye
lids find utterance and relief. He encircles us
and has no distance from us. The center of
creation, he is at the heart of the Christian.
The throne, the power, and the revelation of God
are within his worshipers. His Spirit, sympa
thetic and marvelous in resource, is ours ; the
great helper of the soul in its weakness, its cry
ing, and its struggles. We may in this sad
world, now and then, here and there, have to
lean on an everlasting arm, have even the ten
der mercies of Him whose " tender mercies are
over all his works." There are things of sorrow
which must be ; but of one thing be sure : the
path of sorrow is a path to God. When I am
under the wearing, tearing, destroying activities
of nature and man, I am within reach of a God
uplifting and recreative, calling and proving
himself the God of all comfort. Never, perhaps,
does he work so willingly and with such tender
ness as when with his child who has been made
the victim of a natural sorrow; so unavoidable
the evil, so helpless the situation, and so sensi
tive the stricken one. There was comfort for
the ancient prophets ; there was comfort for
Jesus in his exposed, trying, suffering, and work
ing life.
And every Christian can have the comfort. A
few great bodies go round the sun, but for one

114 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
such there are ten thousand small ones that go in
equal circle and with equal exactness. We name
the former, but the latter in their prodigious num
bers are not named, and, for the most part, not
noticed. Now these latter represent the most of
us persons. It is not in wide fields and great
deeds that our life is spent, but in narrow fields
and little deeds. Yet, while the flowers are myr
iads, not one is insignificant; while the separate
key-notes are many in an anthem, not one is use
less in the rising and falling harmony. So the
believer of a very humble sort is as much before
God as if as high as David. There be as many
tender, patient souls, as many noble spirits, in the
lowly walks of life as in the high. Yet God's true
people go up to him from all walks, go up out of
every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Lives
equally faithful, equally sainted, are in all spheres ;
and lives equally cared for of God, equally full of
the divine consolations.
Living in the Spirit there is comfort for us from
this life — its spiritual and life side, its truly and
permanently bright side, its heavenly side. Let
us pass beyond these destructive forces of nature,
these saddening forces of man, and go over into
that spiritual world, which can make a goodly
part even of nature and the world to comfort us,
and, when these forces are trial and destruction,
can bring to help us the forces of a higher and

GOD IN US COMFORTS 115
better world. In mere nature man is an insect
in the grass under the great sky : a wet week, a
boy going a- fishing, and the insect is no more —
great Nature does not even wink. What are
species of animals or generations of persons to
her ? But the laws of grace are over the laws of
nature. God sends spiritual comfort from things here
by many a king's highway. We read in the
Bible all about such comforts. We hear ser
mons about them. We find them here and there
in our grand and various Christian literature.
Theology is full of them. We sing ourselves
into comfort in our songs. We have slow-com
ing or sudden, open or secret, refreshments ;
pleasant thoughts and feelings springing up and
continuing, until over the brown landscape many
a field is green with the coming spring. At one
moment in a cloudy day a spot bursts out in the
dreary landscape and we say that there the sun
is shining; so with us now and then the open
heavens around us shine : illuminated and filled,
like a palace we stand.
The great kingdom of grace is in every part
a kingdom of comfort. The divine perfections
give comfort. There is comfort in the divine
freedom. God may be under some rule of his
own, but if he is he has not revealed it. He may
have some rule that is uttered in heaven, but if so

Il6 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
it has not been told upon earth. For ever and
everywhere he is free, except of limits set by him
self — free to combine and construct, free to gov
ern, guide, and redeem. There is comfort in the
divine righteousness, that God is the greatest
moral being, that his government is along moral
lines if any government is, that his counsels and
conduct harmonize with the highest known right.
There is comfort in the divine faithfulness, fixed
ness, unchangeableness ; in God's adherence to
his word and his promises. There is comfort in
the divine love and helpfulness and fatherhood ;
in the divine redeeming love, and in " the love of
Christ, which passeth knowledge." The Spirit
comforts by giving soul-satisfying views of Him
who is " a brother born for adversity." For as
in our loneliness and bitterness we walk the frozen
swamp, as the wintry wind strikes us and we heed
it not, the words come to us, " I will not leave
you comfortless: I will come to you." We are
in the light of- his countenance ; we are in the
border-land of heaven.
There is comfort in reading the Bible ; comfort
in the Lord's day ; comfort in the ordinances of
divine worship. There is comfort when with spir
itual persons, in giving and receiving : it is a fore
taste of heaven. There is comfort in doing a
piece of specially Christian work. Many are the
persons who, full of doubts and fears, have gone

GOD IN US COMFORTS

117

with a message of life to tertain others, and in
the going God has met them, " and filled them
with the joy of their message." It became true,
" He that watereth shall be watered himself."
With this watering, the world is a garden of de
lightful work ; a place of waters and flowers and
fruits ; a place of friends in the Lord.
All these spiritual things are permanently here,
are within reach, and, in part, to be ministers of
the divine goodness; to uplift and carry us for
ward, invigorated and hopeful. In any of these
paths from heaven or to heaven " the Sun of
righteousness has risen upon us with healing in
his wings."
God gives us comfort from the life to come.
This world is a shore on which a wide and heavy
sea rolls us up, us mortals, and after a little
sweeps us back; an eternal salt sea that soon or
late shall send its waters over all of human life.
Yet with all this perishable, we are imperishable ;
it is only our clothing that is flesh, and our sur
rounding that is nature. And in the sadness, in
our loss in the transient world, we have the glad
ness in our gain in the permanent world. The
Spirit takes us to the mount, to Nebo, and shows
us the Promised Land. Earthly ease and satisfac
tion do not so give us vision. Looking forward
has some warrant in a prophetic instinct, more
warrant in a spiritual state, and full warrant in

Il8 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the Bible. See how God comforted his mourn
ing people of old by happy visions of the future.
See how the Lord comforts his greater and nearer
people by pointing them in the New Testament
to his coming again, and to times of restitution.
Here, deep in the continent, I see not the ocean
that flows and roars around its edge, but the very
water of these streams is going straight to it;
and could I rise high enough I should see this.
So while in this world I see not the " sea of glass
like unto crystal " that flows and touches all round
the world and is "before the throne." Because
the future is told to us in negatives and pictured
to us in images, and is different from the drama
of nature and of society in which we are, it is not
unreal ; it is not an ideal reflection of this world,
the play of its shadows on the darkness of eter
nity. It is real, though of it " eye hath not seen."
The fish knows nothing of the birds, the waters
understand not the land, and this world under
stands not the next ; and yet these exist. Once
in the morning, in a winter's thaw, I stood hea
vily coated and covered at my gate, when sud
denly I was in another latitude. The sun hap
pened to come out, and it shone from the far
south upon the river flowing before me in full
banks, with ice-cakes and snow-spots. For a
little while the sullenness of nature passed, the
foul weather, the vague sky, the lines of trees

GOD IN US COMFORTS 119
along the nearer bank, the tawny river sweeping
on southward ; I stood in the summer. I felt, as
I turned away, I shall have to wait many weeks
before I shall see the reality, but I shall see it.
When, sorrowing Christian, you at last are
driven out of this earthly mansion because it is
too out of repair to hold you longer; when its
walls fail, totter, and fall, under some wind of
heaven, shall you still have a home ? Yes — " a
home not made with hands, eternal in the hea
vens." Whence came Moses and Elias to talk
with Jesus? Where did Jesus go when he as
cended ? To that place have gone many friends.
In those mansions are doors which ours have en
tered whose bodies have been carried through
our doorways. We must not look too much
upon the face pallid in death, upon the coffin and
the grave. Fix and fix again, woman and child
and strong man, your attention upon Him who
has said, " I am the resurrection, and the life."
Those in the Lord go from homes of toil to man
sions of rest, to partings no more, to activities
which have no pain. Of that spiritually quick
ened world we know not the width of its circle,
the sweep of its experience, the form of its sub
stance, its clothing and adorning, the groups and
the activities.
In great trials you open to these great visions.
God takes you by the hand, and says, " Believe

120 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
me, trust me." And you feel a strong grasp on
your arm ; you hear a voice gentle and strong ;
you feel a presence ; and though still in a mist
you go on in hope of coming to an eternal home.
It seems very big and a great way off, but it will
get more definite and near. Every dear one who
departs into it makes it more definite, makes it
nearer. Comfort ! this is a mighty and universal
experience of the living, of the tried, and of the
dying. It is a reality like the ocean, the air, and
the sun — one of God's great realities.

CHAPTER XV.
GOD IN OUR ORDINARY LIFE.
To God nothing is little and nothing large ; he
helps build every smallest part of the house of
life. We need and we have the ministry of that
which we call the weather; its alternations of heat
and cold, of moist and dry ; and on the equable
distribution depends much of all life in plants, in
animals, or in ourselves. In like manner, in spir
itual things, we need and we have the constant
moving Spirit affecting us in every little thing.
As life is in every one of the spears of grass, so
the Spirit of God is in all those small things of
life that are down near the dust and perish in an
hour. It can be that like the little tulips which
bend in the breeze and smile in the sunshine, so
the little gay and careless things of life that come
and go quickly are not godless, but are obedient
to the divine laws and nourished by the divine
Spirit. Our common life spiritualized is like a
fine church with various dark, dingy, and clouded
windows, as seen from without; but seen from
121

122 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
within, against the sun, grand with all precious
colors, all sainted and angelic forms. God gives
a point of view which magnifies. Every- day life
may be as full of experiences of the living God as
a psalm of old ; may be " filled with all the full
ness of God " : fullness of inspirations and con
solations. Ever communications from heaven
and to heaven ; the sun shining and all the buds
on the trees opening ; grace coming not only unto
some states but unto all. The whole mass of steel
is heated, the whole piece of iron is magnetized,
the whole man inspired.
The dominion of grace includes the whole of
life. The prophets made it so, the Lord made
it so, the apostles made it so, the church makes
it so. Grace goes beyond the boundaries of Sab
bath, of sanctuary, into the whole life of the good
man, filling him with its experiences all the while ;
being with him each day of all the days, each hour
of all the hours ; being with him wheresoever he
goes, whatsoever he does, and in whatever rela
tions he sustains. There is no divine work with
us that stops short of the whole life. Salvation
is mighty enough to save through and through.
No part of the land need be desert. It is a land
of water — brooks and rivers over its whole range.
This is a distinction and glory of God's people that
daily they have means and privileges of grace,
daily the Spirit. Every day will the sun shine

GOD IN OUR ORDINARY LIFE 1 23
and pour down upon them its warmth. Never
need they be away from the sound of the surf of
the endless sea of God.
God is in the home; he brings a gracious
beauty and godliness, the fragrance and air of
paradise, into all domestic life. There is emphat
ically a Christian home. Even as in early times
every family was a church, had its own religion,
its own God, its own services, so somewhat is it
ever. Each hearth is an altar ; every head of a
family, a priest ; every member true, gentle, and
loving. God is in all social relations, to make us op
posed to all selfishness. Paul makes Philemon
regard Onesimus " not now as a servant, but
above a servant, a brother beloved." He says
we are " members one of another," and so all
injustice and unbrotherliness are not to exist.
Again, he who is full of God is full of that soci
ability which gives to life so much of its bloom
and beauty.
God is with us in work. This ordinarily is
subject to disorder and dishonor; it may even
become a tyrant and destructive. Ordinarily, it
is routine; sentiment is not in it; imagination
is not in it; enthusiasm is not in it; at times
cheer is not in it. But there is a secret of the
Lord: "For brass I will bring gold." Down
from the heights there comes a presence to give

124 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
to work a blessing. " Labor is not in vain in the
Lord." Labor is guided, comforted, freed, and
helped in the Lord. God is nigh in our earthly
calling. The word "calling" indicates called of
God, a part of the " high calling of God in Christ
Jesus." Those who are in God are generally
much occupied. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had
the cares of great private administration; Joseph
and Moses, David and Daniel, had the cares of
great public administration.
God is with us in our vision of nature. We
see not only nature in the light of his love and
hope and peace, but also as having a greater fresh
ness, a higher beauty, a grander use ; as having the
glow and expression of the spiritual world ; phys
ical forms and processes speaking of spiritual
things ; the lower glories showing the higher.
While familiarity dulls the vision and sin blinds
the eye, yet for the Christian the seen world is
full of the unseen.
God is with us in our love of art. How, as a
rule, do his people love beauty ! Especially are
song and music theirs. The Bible is full of these,
the church has been full, and heaven is represented
as full. A poetical imagination runs through and
through piety and serves much to change the
present and make bright the future.
Thus God is in our whole life ; our light, our
guide, our guard, our comfort, our every help. He

GOD IN OUR ORDINARY LIFE 1 25
lives in us, to reign over all the evils of our lot.
Where his dwelling-place is, and where his com
ing is, things are put into wonderful order; he
whose earth is so beautiful makes the soul to be
more beautiful. It is his to do " exceeding abun
dantly above all that we ask or think." Such is
a part of his life who breathes the long full breath
of God. He has everywhere retaining, restrain
ing, uplifting force. His living is like that of the
perfect things — no waste, no discord, no opposi
tion, no stunted growths.
So life may be sanctified, spiritualized in every
part. A light may stream ever in at the windows
of the soul ; the morning light to fill the room
and give surpassing cheer. As we discharge our
various duties, views of God may be ours ; views
of providence, views of grace, views of glory ;
faith, feeling, spiritual character may be ours.
As the sun comes from behind the cloud and
rests upon the landscape, brightening it, so the
glory of heaven may come upon all humble
things here, and no place be gloomy and unin
viting. The divine presence and operation, the divine
love and care, are with every one, are associated
with all his down-sitting and up-rising, his go
ing out and coming in ; are as watchful over the
less as over the greater ; to help and cheer in the
workshop or at the plow; an unseen power to

126 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
mark out what he shall be and where he shall go.
"The Lord directeth his steps." In every case
where we put ourselves into his keeping he will
make for us a home ; of each it can be said, his
lines have fallen to him in pleasant places, and he
has a goodly heritage.
So in ideal our whole life is a single blessed
thing, a complete poem, a beautiful piece of music,
one great accord. The Christian is all in the Lord,
as the lordliest tree or the lowliest plant is all in
the light ; is like the flower which is ever turning
its face to the sun. Yes, in all the dull and weary
round of daily life we may sometimes see the
footsteps and sometimes the face of Him who is
very fair. We may walk with him in all the
busy ways of life, our hearts burning within us
all the while as did theirs who walked with him
to Emmaus.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE INDWELLING A HELP TO PLAY.
The play-impulse comes out in all those sports
and games which in their times and fashions
brighten the existence of the young. It exists
in all groups of boys and girls, in all bodies of
young fellows. Every one of us has his recrea
tions in sitting still, in reading, in walking or rid
ing, in calling or visiting.
This play-impulse comes out in art. In the
race at large, pleasure is taken in form of weapon
and tool and building. No home so humble but
is finer for its whitewash, its paint, its flowers.
No people so backward but are less backward for
their love of ornament. No people but have been
the better for their clothing the teachings of wis
dom with the charms of imagination. Literature
— that brilliant art of man's creation — how has
the world had of its beauties and splendors ! So
the fine arts in all their lines and schools and
power of beauty. So Nature in all her wonder
ful creations in sky and waters, in field and wood.
127

128 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
God is not opposed to play. In the highest
religious experience love of natural happiness
does not lessen, much less become practically
extinct. With some this may be so, on the prin
ciple that a greater passion may swallow up a less.
Some so concentrate themselves as to be swal
lowed up with science or with art. Eating and
sleeping may be easily neglected. But he who
has the divine indwelling is vigorous and healthy
throughout, has all the parts of his being alive.
A child may be very much wrapped up in its
mother and yet in much enjoy its playthings
and playfellows. Yes, he who is in the Lord
is thereby the farthest from being sickly or mor
bid ; the farthest from having hatred or scorn of
nature. He may have and enjoy a good table, a
good home, a good book, a good friend. Nat
ural impulse is right and good, is even helpful.
The impulse to eat is not a permitted evil — some
thing below abstinence from eating, below fasting
— but is itself a duty and a blessing. The natu
ral world was made to be enjoyed. The denial
of nature by saints has been an evil terrible to
themselves and terrible to others. Nature is
pure, nature helps spiritual life, absurd and fanat
ical asceticism to the contrary notwithstanding.
Man does not sin when he plays, or become holy
when he ceases to play.
God favors play. It is reasonable to suppose

THE INDWELLING A HELP TO PLAY 129
that when he bestows a gift he, like us, wishes to
see it enjoyed. This is what gifts are given for.
God, our Maker, certainly respects the human
nature he has made. And to use it, to rever
ence it, is to please and glorify him.
God in the laws of nature favors play. It is
an ordinance of his in all the ranks of sentient
being from the lowest to the highest. The
squirrel will race about the tree, will chatter on
the limb. So in all human regions play is a
great tendency. Only under hard stress does it
disappear. Reasonable play is one of those things
in which there is no vanity. It is a natural bless
ing ; it prevents derangement of every kind ; it
helps arrangement of every kind. Now go away
for a longer or shorter period our toils and cares ;
now we are contented and happy. Play is per
missible, healthful, and helpful. It brightens the
spirits ; it tones up the system ; it increases the
vigor of body, mind, and heart. It is a strong
ally in our warfare against wear and tear, against
disease and death. It is one of the great mediums
for restoring vigor to our exhausted nature. In
our restored selves, we return to our work, again
to get weary and dull, to be again rested and rec
reated, our spirits quickened in some mysterious
manner. A thousand voices in nature call us to
work and a thousand voices call us to play. After
work we are to resume play and after play resume

130 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
work. Christ has freed us from work as a slavery,
and by nature and his power within us we can
thoroughly lay aside work for play, and even at
times take play into work.
Play is helpful to the divine indwelling. In a
sense, human nature is the foundation of piety ;
is the base from which its graces rise. The Al-
leghanies and the Rockies are far above the gen
eral floor of the land ; but these immense conti
nental ranges are doubtless built upon a mighty
substructure of plain; the earth's crust there
thicker than common. So the Lord has created
for the heights of piety bases unusually strong.
The supports, the elements of a good man, are
in nature as well as in grace. Nature is a part of
him, as well as grace. Piety is on the framework
of nature, just as the soil is on the hard-pan and
the rock. We wisely and well have a natural as
well as a spiritual life. Attention to both keeps
us sound and whole, perfect and complete.
Those instincts which man carries in common
with the animals are to be carried along in all
their strength in the progress of the race ; though
lower in a sense, are not to be expelled by any
higher. The relationship he sustains to the brute
kingdom is never to cease. His animal nature
lessens only at a fearful cost — the cost of vigor,
the cost of perpetuation of the race, the cost of a
healthy mind and moral sentiment, the cost of a

THE INDWELLING A HELP TO PLAY 13 1
sound theology. The spiritual in him is like the
mental — fundamentally in connection with the
animal. The natural and the spiritual parts are
a complex mass. They are like a tangled skein
of silk of various colors. We are in the terrestrial
as well as in the celestial. And we are most loyal
to Him who is royal when we use all his gifts,
when we enjoy all his benefits — those which na
ture pours forth as well as those which grace be
stows. All our being is to be renewing. Our
excellence is in timely playing as well as in timely
working. Our true behavior is to enjoy so far as
we can all sweet scents and savors, all good color
and form, all good friends and companionships.
The divine indwelling is a help to play. It
helps vigor and therefore sportiveness, therefore
smiles and laughter and happiness of soul.
The faith that is in Jesus, born of heaven and
sending to heaven, is a faith helpful to festival
and holiday, helpful to the sports of childhood
and growth, and to the joys of manhood and
womanhood. To play is a part of the nature
that belongs to us as men and as Christians. All
which was ,good in the unfallen creation is good
and desirable in the redeemed creation. It is as
when our continent emerged ; the land gained on
the waters, new land rose up from the bottom of
inland seas, until finally the large area of North
America existed. So grace is not raising a part

132 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
of your nature, but is raising the whole. Its
work is of as wide extent as you are. It covers
the whole area. Every part of you is important
— the oldest and the newest, the lowest and the
highest. In the earth we must have all the strata
of the rocks ; every bed, the lowermost as well
as the uppermost. We must have the expansion
of vegetable life as well as the expansion of ani
mal life. We must have the coarser work and
the finer. So is the earth best adapted for the
residence of man. In the woods and in the fields
as we walk we see the springs coming up. Every
where over the hills and the valleys it is the same :
water rising out of the earth and appearing upon
the surface, generally upon the hillsides, where
the water-bearing strata most outcrop. Like
this constant issuing of the water is the constant
and universal outcome of the spirit of play in the
divinely inspired man.
What shall the millions of holy children do
when our earth gets as it should be? What do
the millions of children in heaven do ? Or are
there no children there? In our glimpses of the
holy city we see emerald, amethyst, and all man
ner of precious stone. We see gates of pearl and
a street of shining gold. We see running waters
and fruitful trees. There is the play-element
here. Even God himself seems to have it in his

THE INDWELLING A HELP TO PLAY 133
creation of the ludicrous and especially of the
beautiful. Our play-days, our holidays, are like the golden
letters of various shapes which begin the chapters
of old manuscripts. Play is the gilded frame of
the picture, the marginal ornament of the book
of life.

CHAPTER XVII.
THE INDWELLING A BODILY HELP.
There is a mystic sentimentalism which un
derrates the body, along with much else of earth ;
which neglects, despises, and perhaps even repro
bates what are commonly called good things ; all
this in its appreciation of the goods of heaven.
But we are neither to despise nor to neglect any
thing which God has given us. We are to glorify
God in all things, even whether we eat or drink.
The great redeeming God comes into all the
spheres of man's kingdom. Man carries himself
through all his provinces as a redeemed person.
He trusts and prays about the things of nature.
His heavenly life is in his earthly, and his earthly
life is in his heavenly.
Certainly Christ gives to the soul dispositions
healthful to the body. Man is a bundle of or
ganisms : the digestive, the pulmonary, the ner
vous, the muscular, the sexual, the mental, the
moral. By these organisms physical life mani
fests itself. Each of these has a most delicate
134

THE INDWELLING A BODILY HELP 135
susceptibility and each is connected with the
rest; so connected that the condition of any or
ganism affects that of the others. The highest,
the controlling organism, is the mental, the soul.
This it is which the Scripture means by heart,
when it says, " Out of the heart are the issues of
life." Here are the beginnings, the goings forth
of bodily life. Those energies affect it. He who
is in a state of love for all that is to be loved, and
of reverence for all that is to be reverenced, tends
to have a flexible, recuperative, healthful body.
He is ruled by the Master, and blessed results
follow even in his physical nature; he has the
greater power to overcome wear and tear and
disease. Further, Christ redeems the body by redeem
ing the soul from sins injurious to the body. A
person gets bodily harm by fear or dislike or
anger or discontent or consuming regard for
money. A person gets bodily harm in con
demning himself everlastingly, vexing himself
about something in himself, or by forever study
ing how his food or his exercise affects him ; for
ever weighing, measuring, estimating. So one
gets bodily harm by living in a state of condem
nation of others or of anything. " It is God that
judgeth." "Judge not, that ye be not judged."
There is in all evil judgment a balancing of life
on the wrong center, and the result is deteriora-

136 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
tion. A man may live in his work until it hurts
him ; he may live in his dislikes until they hurt
him : the nerve-force degenerates. " Whosoever
committeth sin is the servant of sin." Sourness,
hate, bitterness, scorn, poison the body. Sullen
ness, a state of continual provocation, hurts the
body. Fear, worry, legality, the whole brood
of sins, have evil influence upon brain, spine,
and nerve-center. They tend to feverishness
and congestion, to atrophy and destruction of
power. One may worry about something until
somewhere, by muscular contraction or other
wise, there gets to be a sore spot, a center of ir
ritability, something abnormal and weak. And
so many a bodily infirmity is born, many a
wretched physical condition is produced.
On the other hand, " Walk in the Spirit, and
ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh." You
shall be rid of bad states of soul ; your state shall
become one of victory and rest, and shall tend
to health. Erroneous and injurious ideas shall
be given up, and these sources of feebleness and
sickness shall, therefore, not exist. Mending the
heart will sometimes mend the body. To restore
the soul will sometimes restore the body.
Again, newness of spiritual life can so right a
man that every curative force can do its proper
work upon him: air, sunlight, water, soil, exer
cise, rest, in nature ; the doctor, the nurse, med
icine.

THE INDWELLING A BODILY HELP 137
Christ may accompany with especial power the
means of health, or he may give especial under
standing of them and especial wisdom in their
use. Seemingly, he may especially appear in
nature for bodily good ; may give an especial
blessing to fresh air, change of scene, cleanliness,
nourishing food, massage, medicine, all the cura
tive forces. Yet a direct healing is a very diffi
cult matter to decide about, because of the num
ber of mental cures ; this by quacks, by Christian
science, by hypnotism and magnetism ; this by
ordinary physicians. Great is the healing power
of suggestion. To have the thought power
fully impressed upon you that by a certain act
or process you will be cured is, in the nature of
the case, to do something toward curing you.
Many are the proofs of this. Cases can be cited
of real cures wrought by apparently no other
agency. The variety of these curative processes
is considerable ; the great thing is to have faith
in the remedy.
Men do not sufficiently believe in the forgive
ness of sins, God's forgiveness, complete forgive
ness of the penitent for their faults and sins.
Thoroughly to believe this is to feel acceptance
with God, his entire reconciliation ; is to receive
him in power for redemption. God loves his
enemies, bad as they are; loves you, patiently
waits upon you, and works for the restoration of
your lost self. He did not lose it, but he is try-

138 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
ing to save it, and perhaps the bodily part. It
certainly is not eternally shut off from the influ
ences of the human spirit, and perhaps it is not
from those of the divine Spirit, though the scope
of his working here is quite imperfectly under
stood. Any bringing in of God to accomplish physical
or other restoration is by faith. But it is a mark
of delusion to make one force do all work, cor
rect all evils, cure all diseases. Yet faith has this
appearance simply because it regulates all other
forces; it is by no means a substitute for them,
but it so governs, so corrects, as to set all healthful
agencies at work. Confidence in God seems to
supply conditions which permit him to create
favorable changes in the body.
The divine indwelling is a bodily help in the
matter of death. In redeemed man there are
glimpses of a special power over nature ; this in
the miracles of the Redeemer, and of certain of
his; this in a certain possible power to recuper
ate the body, even to heal it; this in certain
power given to bear and to do with ease that
which otherwise were hard. This we owe in
part to a soul naturally exalted, and in part to
the streaming in of the powers of the Holy Ghost.
" The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth
for the manifestation of the sons of God." Even
as God is instant and operative in nature so more

THE INDWELLING A BODILY HELP 1 39
or less shall the divine life in his people make them
instant and operative in nature. It shall be used,
it may be, as a garment to be put on and off,
even as the angels have seemed to use it, or as
our Lord after his resurrection seemed to use it.
There is such a vitality in piety, such a breaking
through nature, such a manifestation of the spir
itual kingdom in the natural and over the natural.
A distinguishing evidence of this power of spir
itual life over nature is seen in the resurrection
from the dead. The Lord overcame the death
of nature ; he appeared and reappeared in the
resurrection body. His followers shall be re
leased through death from nature as binding,
and only use nature as helping; shall have the
full attainment of that which is above nature, that
which we call the supernatural — perhaps never in
divorcement from nature, but ever in lordship
over her.
You have the fear of death, you feel helpless
before the great enemy. But think of such a
Scripture as this : " Jesus through death hath
destroyed him that had the power of death."
Or think of Paul's song of thanksgiving : " O
death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is
thy victory?" If you die you are only fallen
asleep in Christ, you are really alive. In the
Saviour's union with you your vital substance is
guarded, sustained, and you shall awake again.

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE INDWELLING FOREVER.
GOD is permanent. " Thou, O Lord, remain-
est forever." Again and again in the sad refrain
of the Psalms there break in the repeated assur
ances of Jehovah's abiding presence. In the Nine
tieth Psalm we have set over against the perish-
ableness of man the imperishableness of God ;
over against the temporal world the eternal;
over against the passing of time and the evil
of change him who is our " dwelling-place for
ever and ever." Jesus is permanent. We read,
" Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and
forever." Believers are permanent. Christ can
not change, and if he brings them into union with
himself, how can they but abide ? He holds them,
confirms them, conforms them. Some great forest
stands; the crowns of a thousand trees shining
in the sun, moving in the breeze ; in their wilds,
giants wonderful of stature ; everywhere, trunks
rising from the earth like masts. Now, no poverty
140

THE INDWELLING FOREVER 141
of soil, no barren ground, makes these to die ; their
tap-roots strike down to some deeper stratum.
The forest is fresh even to a mysterious age ; is
of undying verdure ; an eternal vegetation. So
live unto everlasting God's people ; in their vig
or they grow and flourish, are ever refreshed
and refreshing. " I have meat to eat," said Jesus,
"which ye know not of." The fir-tree on the
hillside defies the wintry wind and all the storms
of all the years, because its root goes into the
crevices of the rock or grips the surface and the
angles. So he who is in the infinite and eternal
Spirit shall hold on. " They that wait upon the
Lord," said the prophet, " shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as
eagles." Spiritual and eternal life are in much one.
The spiritual life confirmed becomes eternal.
The true life is of God and in God, and destined
to continue while God does. The indwelling
Spirit is a surety and a seal. We hallow people
when they die; we say that they are with the
Lord ; but should we not hallow them while they
live? They are in the Spirit; they bear the
Lord's seal, his name and likeness; are marked
as his property, secured as his treasure. Do we
not read even of Christ, a For him hath God the
Father sealed " ? And every son, even as did
the Son of God, carries the Spirit to make and

142 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
mark him a son. And so we read of Christ's
people, " In whom, after that ye believed, ye
were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise."
Their life in the Spirit from Christ makes sure
their continuance in life even beyond death ; a
continuance enjoyable and enjoyed in all the
glory of the kingdom. " Sealed," said the
Apostle, " unto the day of redemption."
The future life is real. The life of the corals
and the oysters, of the fishes and the lizards, has
been followed by the life of the megatheriums
and the mastodons, and that has been followed
by the life of the higher brute creatures, which
in turn has been followed by the life of human
creatures ; a rational, an advancing race. But
the possibilities of life are not here exhausted.
The earth's revolutions shall go on after you and
I have gone, and with them a mighty life shall
continue. Meanwhile a still higher order of life
has been created or revealed, and into it we can
have entered.
He who is divinely filled is absolutely inde
structible. In him is the Spirit, with his mighty
working through all wear and tear, all enemies and
. change, all that we fear and dread, even through
death. Things shall move along as unimpeded as
the planets move in the heavens. And God shall
be the motive power.
"The mercy of the Lord is from everlasting

THE INDWELLING FOREVER 143
to everlasting upon them that fear him." That
is, it is from everlasting in cause and to everlast
ing in effect, from everlasting in thought and to
everlasting in reality. Here is an immense idea,
an immense fact, brought into close connection
with the man who fears God. That man goes
on to everlasting, and by a decree which is from
everlasting. To-day he is, to-morrow he is not
— no, not so. To-day he is and to-morrow he is.
The length, breadth, and height of the cathe
drals were planned beforehand, but only gradu
ally were they built. Slowly advanced the liv
ing work of beauty ; slowly it became strong
and capable of surviving. Piece by piece it was
done : the deep portals of the doors, the large
windows, the richly carved front and the but
tressed sides, the towers, the spires. Figures,
carvings, and colorings still decorate the building
as the days go by. The beautiful structure may
take centuries to finish. So God has a long work
with his own, and this work is never completed.
He who is the underlying cause and ground in
the world of things is the underlying cause and
ground in that world of spirits in which he con
tinually dwells, giving it continuance and per
manence. The Bible says of the righteous, " He
shall never be moved." In railroad engineer
ing large masses of stone are quarried, moved,
and fixed ; culverts are built to last a thousand

144 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
years. Sand, lime, and stone, with human in
vention, strength, and skill, build them to last
forever, to carry beneath them the waters of a
thousand springs to come. Under each dim arch
shall water flow while grass grows and water
runs. Very like indeed in strength for unmea
sured years is the Christian. Unlike too, for these
sunless culverts remain with the perishable earth,
while he shall remain with the imperishable
heavens. So solid is he.
The psalmist sang, " Thou hast made my
mountain to stand." No pressure known on
the earth's surface shall move the mountain, no
blowing of wind or pouring of rain or scathing of
fire or crumbling of frost. Ever you may look
into the distance and the mountain is there.
From year to year Mount Katahdin in Maine,
on the extreme east, Pike's Peak in the center of
the continent, Mount Shasta on the Pacific coast ;
the Alps and the Pyrenees, the Apennines and
the Himalayas, the Andes and the Alleghanies :
no earthquake shock shall move, no changes in
all the lapse of time shall destroy.
The waters of the sea are running in mighty
currents, upper currents and under; are swept
by the winds of all quarters ; are rising and fall
ing with tidal waves : so ever, night and day,
from year to year. But here and there over all
the wide area are islands and chains of islands,

THE INDWELLING FOREVER 145
strong as the mountain-ranges the peaks of which
the islands are ; established so as no moving masses
of water can ever break them down ; no rushing,
piling waves, driven by wind or tide, can go over
them. So endure they "who are kept by the
power of God through faith," they of the believing
type ; their " mortality" is " swallowed up of life " ;
they "of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Our
Lord says, " He that believeth . . . hath ever
lasting life." He speaks of "fruit unto life eter
nal," and says of certain, "I give unto them
eternal life." And so among the gifts of God's
indwelling, many and mighty, we have this great
est and sum of them.
The walk with Christ is a walk in view of the
land which is very broad, the morning land, " the
land of uprightness ; " a land into which those who
enter know the names and nature of angels, and
know the Lord over the creatures as he is not
known here. Let the world and its processions
go by, let the years come and go. We go out
and in in the daytime and know not of what is in
the heavens above us ; but it begins to get dark,
and silently all the stars appear. The believer is
carried up and over and on, shaped and mastered
by the Spirit, and then this life of duty, toil, and
conflict, of trial even, is crowned with perfect and
eternal life.

CHAPTER XIX.
EVERLASTING LIFE A GROWTH.
The spiritual life here prefigures the spirit
ual life hereafter. It is just as the mineral king
dom, in certain instances, prefigures the vegetable.
Some minerals present vegetable forms and col
ors. The frosted window presents the forms of
moss and seaweed. It is also just as the seed-
corn buried in the earth and germinating in the
darkness prefigures the plant which shall rise
above the earth ; or as the green grain-field of
the spring prefigures the ripening harvest-field
of the summer. So present graces, gifts, and
blessedness are the same as those which shall be,
the impurities removed, the absolutely perfect
metal remaining. Such correspondence there is
between this lower and that higher state, supple
mentary to this and modified for the better. The
seed in the earth can hardly foretell the plant,
the acorn knows but little of the oak. What
do the animals know of human life? So in this
146

EVERLASTING LIFE A GROWTH 147
world, with its limitations, we can hardly under
stand that; in its weight and measuring, in its
form and coloring, in all that shall come of its
wiser people and its greater love. The river
searches, it may be, long and much to find its
outlet; the course will be down long valleys,
around ridges, through a mountain-range per
haps ; will be with many windings and a various
current ; but at last the river reaches the sea. So
that which is now is but a warrant, an earnest, of
that which shall be. The heir is now under tutors
and governors, then he shall enter on his inher
itance. Here are given the strength, the tastes,
the fitness for that which shall be there.
The future shall bring but natural growth ; very
little that is arbitrary, that is artificial, but mainly
what is organic. Even as the sap is changed into
vegetable juices, and these are changed into the
solid forms of plant life, and all by well-arranged
movement. When the present spiritual life be
comes eternal life, it will be as natural as when
invisible vapor in the sky becomes visible cloud.
One sows here and reaps hereafter, and so we are
counseled to lay up treasure in heaven.
We see our little brooks that come down across
the fields ; we look at our streams that rise with
the rains and fall when they cease. But we have
learned that there are rivers on a magnificent
scale, rivers fed from mountain-ranges and roll-

148 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
ing through long-extended basins. We have
learned of the Missouri and the Mississippi.
And we know that the river does not end with
the horizon. It goes on under other skies. So
with him in whom God dwells, who is a certain
incarnation of God. Let him serenely pass be
yond the horizon. He is the friend of God, and
when he is not, then, as with Enoch of old, God
takes him. He dies ; his kindred come, take up
the body, and bury it. But when all this which
was visible is under the ground, there still is a
living person and a divine indwelling.
We read of geological times in which much
was done toward forming the earth; in which
flora and fauna came and went, and still other
flora and fauna of finer form came into being.
The whole creation advanced. So advances the
spiritual life, develops organically into the eternal
life. One does not change his radical character:
he remains morally the same. Certain processes
of grace begun here are carried forward. The
work now and then is like the work of the coral
insects, putting up on some submarine volcanic
peak that which shall become a palm-crowned
island on the wide sea.
As, in the finishing of the earth, the broad
valleys were filled, the foundations of the plains
and prairies were laid, many rugged places cov
ered and leveled, lake borders were terraced and

EVERLASTING LIFE A GROWTH 1 49
great flats run out into the sea, so similar move
ments shall take place for the Christian ; his state
shall change, he shall take on new and higher
forms. His genesis, his creation, shall go for
ward. As heat goes into light, as the chemical
powers go from simple to complex combinations,
so the humbler sensibilities of the Christian, his
natural sympathies, shall develop into the high
est and most beautiful moral and self-sacrificing
affections ; natural affection pervaded and uplifted
by the new inspirations, by religion combining
with nature, feeding and freshening its percep
tions, sensibilities, associations, and sympathies.
The divine indwelling shall go on to a life com
plete in itself and its surroundings. Yet for a
time the stream is narrow and shallow, is in the
fastnesses of the mountains ; but patience, and it
shall come out into the wide plain. The river
of life runs through that ridge which bounds our
vision ; continues on into the greater spaces and
freedoms beyond. The stream which flows now
shall flow then in fuller volume. He who en
lightens us now will enlighten us still more; he
who makes free now will make still more free.
He who hallows us here can still more hallow
us there, where surrounding evil shall be gone,
the deadly struggle be over; the struggle with
temptation, with the inward resistance and the
outward obstacle to being good. The Spirit

150 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
there shall work all clearance of sin, all consecra
tion to God, all life of grace, all aid in praying
and praising, in fellowship and service ; all gift in
knowledge and wisdom and speech. Yes, a lower
system shall pass into a higher. One shall, in
part at least, have passed from the kingdoms of
nature into the magnificence of the kingdoms in
the Spirit.
From beginning to end the Word of God ever
points us to a system of life distinctly higher than
the present and in which the religious element is
dominant ; a perfect and permanent system among
intelligent and spiritual beings ; and while in part
their own work and natural, still in part the crea
tive, adorning, and redeeming work of the Spirit
of God : even that kingdom of heaven which has
promise for time and promise for eternity. The
Old Testament is full of this promise, and so is
the New.
In organic growth periods like and unlike each
other occur — transitions to that which is higher.
A shell- fish forms in the ooze at the bottom of
the bay — a square inch of oyster, say ; that little
creature grows right where it is to larger and
larger size, but keeps to its type. On the other
hand, a growth occurs that passes to a stage un
like yet like the former. A seed changes some
what magically in form, until, instead of the frail

EVERLASTING LIFE A GROWTH 15 I
and tiny germ, we have the tree in its magnitude
and majesty. A like organic passage occurs in
spiritual life after death. Here is the life of the
caterpillar : it is quite different from the after-life
of the butterfly, yet the insect is the same. He
has passed up higher, by the working of a law
which was over him. Just so it is with the
Christian. He naturally, legitimately, organi
cally enters into his future life. No man gets
there arbitrarily, artificially, without cause in
himself, and that existing before he gets there.
Life here is like that of the little plants which
in late winter we grow in the window to set out
in the spring ; gives here that which is but as the
early wild-flowers to the whole summer land ;
gives here that which is but as the first ripe spot
in a great harvest-field. For instance, the abid
ing of Christ within is the power of the resurrec
tion, is the actual living source of a spiritual and
glorified body. For Scripture says, " If the
Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead
dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the
dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by
his Spirit that dwelleth in you." That indwelling
of Christ in his own does it. When tired we lie
down to rest and sink into sleep and utter help
lessness, but we are kept by the powers of nature
and the presence of God ; kept to awake the same

152 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
persons that lay down, yet very much refreshed.
In like manner does God work when " he giveth
his beloved sleep."
The germ is here, but beyond a certain point
it can only develop under the forces and condi
tions of another world ; a world the whole econ
omy of which shall be adapted to produce such
development; shall be such that there shall be
times of restitution, that there shall be the mani
festation of the sons of God. Now may that
Spirit who unknowable is behind all things known,
and indivisible is behind all things divided, who
without form is behind all form — may he reveal
to us in all its substance and force, its motion
and growth, that truly better world than this.
And now, as we go on in our study, may it be
us "to whom God would make known what is the
riches of the glory of this mystery which is Christ
in you the hope of glory."

II.
THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE
INDWELLING.

153

CHAPTER XX.
THE BELIEVING LIFE.
This study of fundamental religious experi
ences has been, so far, from the point of view
of the Spirit, his wonderful work in altering and
making and molding. I now turn from the
heavens to the earth, turn from him who has in
fluence to him who is influenced. Let us take a
walk around his estate, even enter his home. His
birth is believing, and the root of all his life and
growth is believing ; so we will begin with believ
ing: that by which we receive him whose pres
ence moves the air-currents that encircle the
earth and the ocean-currents that encircle the
continent ; whose presence it is that makes even
nature not distant, cold, and dead, but near, warm,
and full of life. But without their assent the Cre
ator is in his worlds, while only by their assent
is the Father of spirits in the spirits — does he
have this mystical union with his own. By out
ward pressure may two crystals grow together
and become one, but only by inward assent may
i55

156 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
man receive his God and become that spiritual,
divinely filled being we wish now to study.
Believing is fundamental; for only this gives
and maintains that divine indwelling which is a
well of water springing up into everlasting life.
Believing is a natural force with supernatural
helps, by which man on his part as a free being
is able to make connection with God on his part ;
is that which on our side runs parallel with all
the divine moving. It gives the divine indwell
ing in each of its manifestations, as the guid
ing, the liberating, the comforting. It gives the
opening for Christian experience, Christian wor
ship and service. No elevating influence can
come until the person unlocks and opens an
inner door. But when this is done, God, though
he was within, arrives, as it were, from afar. Be
lieving is the grand way, the arranged way, the
natural, the constitutional way. It is the very
power which brings in God. It and it alone enables
the spirit of man to enter into communion with
God. It and it alone enables a man to outlive sys
tems and suns ; it makes him superior to death
and all other forces of evil, because it places the
living God within him. It is as the putting of
seed into the ground. Here is a seed, but of
what use is it until the soil is around and over it,
until it is put under the conditions essential to
sprouting? Believing is as the covered kernel of

THE BELIEVING LIFE 157
wheat out of which comes in due time a stalk with
many grains. In this losing himself in God one
finds himself as never before ; he comes to his
own. He is like the bud which was shut up in
darkness, with winter without ; but a great warmth
came round, a great running of sap began, the
veins of the bud filled, and it unfolded. It was
Jesus who uttered the words, " All things are
possible to him that believeth;" Jesus, the great
est example of believing the world has ever seen.
Believing is a very emphatic teaching of the
Old Testament through all its Psalms and proph
ecies and histories. It is an essential character
istic of the whole race of the sons of God ; es
sential in John the Baptist, in the teaching of
Jesus, in the teaching of Paul and John ; through
out the Bible spiritual living is by faith. These
words contain the whole of it : " Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
This believing is the letting yourself connect
with and be held by the Lord of all heavens and
suns and stars, of all systems, remote or near. It
is like the attachment of those beautiful nests that
hang from the end of lofty branches, that no
enemy by climbing can reach within ; nests that
wave to and fro in every breeze and yet are sel
dom injured by the hardest storm.
A steamship is here, a body of iron and steel, the
labor of a thousand men a thousand days, finished

158 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
in its structure and engines to a fabulous fineness.
It bears on over the lifting waters and across the
limitless sea. The passengers, with or without
passing fears, feel safe in what they know and in
that they are supported, kept, and carried on. That
illustrates our faith in Him in whom we have put
ourselves and keep ourselves. The engineer con
structs his bridge after the minutest forethought,
in all its compactness and solidity, its curving lines
and symmetry. It stands a wonder of strength
and grace, lordly and beautiful. It springs from
shore to shore. No frost shall crack it, no wind
blow it over. It shall live in all its splendid utility
a thousand years. Multitudes shall use it and
never be afraid. This is their faith who walk
with God.
Believing is the apprehension of truth, and so
strong as to begin the work of redemption. There
is a beginning to understand the Eternal Being ;
a beginning to perceive him who was but a dim
and far-off reality, who was but a mere speck of
light, a star ; to see him as the sun. Now the
whole visible creation might disappear with the
stars of night and still God would remain like
the sun. Though the earth were burned up,
his judgment would still sit and his salvation be
still clear. Put out all the starry suns that fill
illimitable space, and this Sun would still shine.
Believing is to have, in the grave doubts of nature,

THE BELIEVING LIFE 1 59
deep conviction of spiritual realities ; is to realize,
as not naturally, law and gospel ; is to sense and
understand the glorious statements of psalmist
and prophet, of apostles and the Master. It is
as true now as of Paul and his fellow- Christians,
" God . . hath shined in our hearts, to give the
light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the
face of Jesus Christ."
Another element of belief is appreciation of
religious truth. Says one, " No man can sav
ingly possess the truth who does not appreciate
it." No man can sing who does not appreciate
singing, and those who do sing greatly appreciate
the art. No man can paint who does not appre
ciate beauty. Believing is as when one sees the
flowers scattered everywhere along the road on
a summer's day, and enjoys them. The believer
appreciates the promises of God ; appreciates the
Lord Jesus Christ; appreciates his light, his gui
dance, his comfort; appreciates the blessing of
daily drawing upon him to meet daily wants and
worries, daily temptations and trials. He knows
his own emptiness, his own weakness, and appre
ciates Christ's word, " Without me ye can do
nothing." This pleasure is like that of him who
lives near a lake that lies narrow between slowly
descending mountain-spurs that slope gently to
it : he has a constant sight and enjoyment of the
other side as it stretches away and afar.

160 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
But the main element of belief is appropriation.
You must do more than admit and agree, be
more than a nominal believer. There needs to
be more than a thought or a knowledge. You
also must do more than appreciate ; you must
take hold of, you must appropriate. You must
have desire, have hunger to come under all the
obligations and influences of religious truth. You
must be as ready to be caught hold of by the
truth as dry wood is to catch fire and burn freely.
Readiness for the truth becomes as much a prop
erty as combustibility is a property of coal and
wood, or as magnetism is a property of some
pieces of iron, and of that great magnet the earth
itself. One is as ready for God to work in and
for him in this element of faith as the prepared
field is ready for air and sunlight and moisture.
In nature and in grace, fulfil the conditions and
you have the mighty works. In the snow we
have the myriad, monotonous raindrops turned
into a variety of beautiful crystals. Now sup
pose a drop envious and ambitious to become a
snowflake with charming form : that drop could
never undergo the transformation unless the drop
placed itself where it could be touched by the frost
or the cold wind, could get high in the air or reach
some polar region. Fulfil the conditions and there
are snowflakes enough. Believing is the earth
receiving the rain and being nourished; it is the

THE BELIEVING LIFE l6l
great broad land filling under the steady down
pour that means something for grain- field and
meadow, for orchard and forest. We receive
of Him who sent the earth spinning in its circles,
and whose circle of light and love goes round
the earth every day of its being.
The little children of the whole child-world il
lustrate believing. They eat and sleep and play
and do their tasks with entire trust. They, the
most feeble of beings, have a trust equal to their
need, and are content. They neither doubt, nor
are suspicious, nor worry, nor dream even, of not
being taken care of. The Christian life in this
respect is a kind of glorified childhood. There is
among mere men no richer, no fuller experience of
faith than in the saints of the far-off Old Testa
ment time. In the Spirit before the mast, they
first and vividly illustrate trust and its calmness,
consciousness of God and walking in his presence ;
illustrate too the firmness and strength of soul
derived from this reliance on things unseen.
The brightest illustration of a life of faith is
our Lord Jesus. No voice so speaks of the
Heavenly Father, no heart ever beat so full of
trust in that Father. No man ever so perceived,
so -appreciated, so appropriated the unseen real
ities as he. Living or dying, his was thoroughly
a life of faith. He said, " He that sent me is
true;" "I know that thou hearest me always;"

1 62 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
" I live by the Father." To him the Father was
a great reality, communion with him was habitual,
life was a walk with him. To no man has God
listened and responded as to him, the ideal Man.
True man with true and warm heart, unappre
ciated and unsupported, living in a very tempest of
misrepresentation and opposition, he maintained
faith. In all his trials and temptations, his weari
ness, he maintained faith. In that mysterious
belief that he was the Son of the Father, and in
that mysterious purpose that he was to redeem
the world, he maintained faith, simple, fresh, un
disturbed. Yes, his was faith in its highest de
velopment, its absolute perfection.
If your lot be God's choosing and your duty
his making, then in him be your believing. You
may be like a field in a dry time : but let a great
rain come, there is refreshment in it, nourish
ment in it, strength in it. Let God come into
your soul, and he will put a prop under every
thing, he will put you to rights. Only believe
every hour, hold on by faith. The seaweed on
the rock in all the sweep of the tide, and with
nothing in which to root, is able to hold ; that
is a very hard storm which can tear the plant
away. The lichen holds fast to the face of the
cliff amid all beatings of the weather, and even
grows. So you can be hardy, so you can hold
on to God and hold on by a dozen separate grips

THE BELIEVING LIFE 163
to his church, his Word, and all, as to the rock
of your salvation.
The believer is leading this life in spiritual
things all the while, apprehending, appreciating,
appropriating them. An undercurrent of such
faith flows through all his life. It is his response
to the divine movement within him. It is that by
which he is continually kept in contact with the
eternal existence. Our faith underlies all the
divine side of the divine indwelling and, in fact,
all the human side. It is essential to the divine
illumining and guiding, the divine comforting and
liberating; essential to all the continuous divine
work within us.

CHAPTER XXI.

A GOOD LIFE.

The divine indwelling creates a good life.
Union with Christ gives of his Spirit until he is
formed within. The lake responds to the sun —
the blue waves sparkle and shine ; so the believer
responds to him who is believed in, and gives
back his image. There is a sense of his great
ness, his goodness, his nearness ; the carrying of
his presence continually ; the being supported
by his communications constantly. Paul makes
much of the life of Christ in us ; of being born
by this into a second birth, a holy nature, and a
growing goodness.
A good life is a true life. It harmonizes with
the nature of things and the nature of God. He
who is saved is saved from delusion ; he is like
the prodigal " when he came to himself" — he is
restored to a right mind. Man can calculate the
place of the moon in the heavens at any period,
however remote, in the past or in the future, be
cause the moon is ever true to the laws that
164

A GOOD LIFE 165
govern it. A good man is true to the laws, the
forces, that govern him. He sees and loves and
lives in moral truth. He leads a life correspon
dent to the moral law and to the law of faith.
The crystal is under law ; so is the Christian. He
is under the great Lawgiver; is in the divine
order ; is in agreement with nature and all that is
above nature ; is in agreement with all the orderly,
organic systems of God.
A good life is a beautiful life. There is in a
good life an indescribable element — something
like the fragrance of a flower. It comes out in
taste, in tone, in manner of behavior. We do
best to call it spiritual beauty. There is One
who arches the sky, who graduates its form and
color in every part ; who has touched the rolling
wave with beauty and the rising vapor ; who col
ors each leaf and shades each feature ; who has
given bloom to the purple plum and red to the
ripening peach. He also has created moral beau
ties : those of motherhood and brotherhood ; those
of courage and gentleness ; those of faith and hope,
of love and patience, of prayer and praise ; " the
beauty of holiness." His polishing and gilding
and garnishing and finishing are seen in all good
souls. The graduated and balanced color of the
landscape is an emblem of the graduated and
balanced temper of the soul. Says Emerson :
" The high and divine beauty ... is that which

1 66 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
is found in combination with the human will, and
never separate. Beauty is the mark God sets
upon virtue." In many a place we see fine and
fair trees, mostly unsown of men, untilled by
human toil, but planted and nurtured of God.
Some of us love trees and the genius of the
woods, while all see in the wooded world a beau
tiful thing. And the work of Christ in the soul
makes in its magnificent vision that the love of it
should be a passion with us all. A great action
has grandeur, and a good action has beauty.
Many a simple, touching act of devotion has
thrilled one with its beauty : the stepping aside
to let another advance to safety or to honor. We
think that much and mightily those who stand in
celestial light behold of beauty veiled to mortal
eye. We always picture the angels as having in
their forms and faces a comeliness indescribable.
A good life is strong. It authenticates itself
and appeals to others ; is seen and felt by the
world and by the community of believing souls ;
is a strong testimony and influence, impressive,
often much more influential than the possessor is
aware of.
A good life is for God; this in beginning,
middle, and end; this is always its character.
Each kind of tree has its own type throughout, a
form unchangeable, and develops its peculiar na
ture completely. The basswood is of its own

A GOOD LIFE 167
kind; the tulip-tree differs from it a little, the
oak a good deal, and the apple from all. So
a good life has its own laws and forms, its own
world in all its littles and its large, and is forever
incapable of change. There is, possibly, at bot
tom, one disposition out of which the graces
come, and by which they are nourished ; and this
may be what Scripture means by the new heart ;
but every grace has a specific and peculiar char
acter. The faith, the hope, the patience, ever
have God in view; all states of soul, with their
corresponding activities, have an especial sensi
tiveness and tenderness in relation to him. The
person is evidently a man of God, though the idea
of him may vary with persons.
A good life is inspired by the Holy Ghost ; by
him who is appointed for man, the all-concluding
being of the visible creation. That which makes
the Christian differ from others is not so much
that which he does as the way in which he does
it, and the motives and supports he has in doing
it. The divine indwelling is the great support of
a good life. Water goes down into the soil; it
enters each mouth of the infinitesimal rootlets,
goes by these thousand ways into the stalk,
exhales into the air, and returns again to the
ground. This is the turning of the mystic wheel
of life. So the Spirit reaches down and in and
on, and gets to all cells and germs of every sort

1 68 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
of life of which we are capable. He enters body
and soul, and opens wide the heavenly gates to
entrance free for every one, with all that properly
belongs to him.
We need the air. Its perpetual currents are
for common purposes. So, too, there are at work
everywhere below us those forces which crystal
lize minerals, which form rocks; there are at
work everywhere around us those forces which
integrate and disintegrate, which organize and
disorganize. In like manner there is at work
among His people the indwelling Spirit every
day and every hour. You are neither gloomy
nor complaining, neither cross nor exacting. He
gives you the right manner of acting, the right
attitude of being. Christ lives and works in you
as nature works in every separate petal and stamen
of a flower. You are gentle under provocation,
insensible to slights, calm amid bustle, ever quiet
in spirit, ever following where the Lord leads.
You have with him blessed communings amid
ordinary surroundings, prayers and meditations
when alone, friendly offices and charitable judg
ments when with others. Men used to make ex
cursions afar for gold ; but one does not need to
undertake a journey to get divine grace. Nor
need it await until one is risen from the dead ; it
may be received now.
A good life is negatively good ; it works

A GOOD LIFE 169
toward sinlessness. It is because of the sin of
the world that the Bible so emphasizes holiness ;
so often calls God holy and the Spirit holy. Sin
gives color, gives trend, to the whole Book ; it is
a Book against sin, and telling how to get rid of
it ; telling of salvation from its dreadful power.
The sinless life is like a soil neither too hard
nor too soft, but mellow ; neither too wet nor too
dry, but moist ; a soil free of the seeds and roots
of weeds. The sinless life is like a perfect gem.
It is of one substance throughout; it is equally
dense, equally clear and proportioned. It has
nothing wanting, nothing broken or crooked or
clouded. It has no flaw or crack, no blur or
speck or stain ; is neither scratched nor worn, but
is a pure and perfect stone. The sinless man- is
as the " angels, that excel in strength, that do
His commandments, hearkening unto the voice
of his word."
The indwelling Spirit purifies from sin as the
wind purifies the house, the road, the field ; sweep
ing away many a foul thing, many a germ of dis
ease, many an insect plague. We have the fire,
that burns all which is dirty beyond the power of
water to wash clean or beyond the power of the
hand to rub clean. We have the ocean, where
the life of the waters is kept up by constant mo
tion ; by perpetual currents from equator to pole
and from pole to equator. In the swelling and

170 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
impelling of the waters, now gently and now with
power, and ever doing their cleansing work, we
have an emblem of the Spirit. By Bible and
conscience, by preacher and teacher, he tells us
about the law and the sin that breaks the law.
When once his voice is heard, it cannot be over
come by wishes or thoughts or activities ; it can
not be bought off or drugged, but continues plain
and penetrative, convincing of degrees and kinds
and consequences of sin never thought of. How
he illuminates places and times in which we did
evil ; certain transactions, or even the whole mis
erably selfish, spiritually heartless course! It
may simply be one open sin, one secret sin, the
neglect of one duty, or it may be an accumula
tion of sins ; but, whatever it be, the battle is
fought over it. This is the Spirit's cleansing.
The indwelling Spirit creates penitence, gives
deliverance from the love of sin, full purpose
to avoid it and keep every commandment. The
divine indwelling works to separate and remove ;
works like the great streams of water passing
through the sluice-boxes in mining-districts, to
take away the dirt ; works like fire in iron-ore, to
remove all that which is foreign — the water, the
acid, the sulphur; works to make deliverance
from the power of indwelling sin — the glorious
state of likeness to the Lord, of which state a
symbol is the clothing of the angels and the white

A GOOD LIFE 1 71
linen of the saints. Men of the Spirit are men
who hate sin. Look at the deep repugnance to
it in the 101st Psalm, at the deep penitence for it
in the 51st Psalm, at the love of its opposite,
righteousness, in the 119th Psalm. This psalm
has the very breadth and heat of intense passion
for keeping God's laws.
But a good life is positively good; is human,
vigorous, juicy ; makes existence particularly sub
stantial and joyful ; takes hold of the very rest and
glory of heaven. Heat is not only destructive,
but also constructive. It has helped stratification
and cleavage in the deep earth below us. It has
helped vegetation and animal life in the wide
world around us. So the positiveness of a good
life is to be insisted upon ; not only the conquest
of enemies, but distinct possession ; not only rid
dance of mud and dust and every foul thing, but
the real bloom of crocus and lily and rose ; the
real aroma and taste and touch; the vigor and
the flourishing of faith, hope, and love ; the clear
mind, the vivid feeling, the happy soul. Such
life is as real as are stars and planets, as are moon
and sun, as is every form and power of nature.
Grace has its push and pull, its light and flame.
Again, a good life is good in ordinary every-day
matters. Jesus liked to see the people in their
homes, their markets, their highways ; on the so-
called homely side of life. So he is with his own in

172 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
all daily life of toil and care and pain, helping them
to be good in it all. He is with them even as the
tabernacle, that symbol of the divine presence, was
with them of old, and in the very midst of the
camp. He is with his own in their hand to work,
their eye to see, their voice to say or sing ; with
them in all their daily round.
The most of the land is not mountain-ranges,
and life for the most of us is not on Alpine peaks.
The human race largely lives not on heights, but
on lowlands. So the most of piety is not amid
the stars, but upon this earth ; is not in matters
of great importance, but in matters of little im
portance. Life is like the fugitive slave travers
ing woods and swamps at night : his eye is on the
pole-star, but as for the rest, he has bad walking
and much darkness. Our living is by number
less pulse-beats and breathings, each seemingly a
small affair. The really good life is largely faith
fulness in little things ; in right motives and self-
control here ; in bright and contented service
here ; all the round of labor a round by Christ
attended. Every dome of the sky has all the
glory of sunrise and sunset ; so every sphere of
life may be touched with the glory of God. Every
piece of woods has flowers in the spring and the
singing of birds. In the service of God there is
neither great nor small. He who has set all the
stars in space has given all their markings and

A GOOD LIFE I 73
colorings to the tiniest shells of the sea-shore.
Size is nothing to him whose equal workings we
behold through telescope and microscope. Out
of the little particles God makes a great world ;
so out of the littles of life he makes a great charac
ter. In the plain of our life we may be cold,
wet, barren soil, yielding little but moss ; or, under
the Sun of righteousness, we may be like the wide
valley filled with grass and grain.
In short, a good life is good through and
through, being of a piece; has that unity which
characterizes every work of God's hand ; likeness
of part to part, agreement of each with all. Every
crystal has agreement of parts. Every tree is
one through root and stem, branch and leaf, from
heart to bark, and from furthest tiny rootlet
to topmost branch. That grand elm which rises
near the house high above the chimney grows as
one, so graceful and yet so grand. So life in
Christ is one from beginning to end ; one in all
the graces and gifts, all the states and exercises.
Our tangle and mistiness, our disconnected and
chaotic thought and feeling, belong not to the
thing itself. In a tree stem and boughs, branches
and twigs and leaves, work, each part for every
other part. The tough and elastic hickory hangs
and swings and holds as one. In the old my
thology the nine graces dance hand in hand ; to
gether they tread a common measure. So all

174 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the graces are in harmony and helpfulness. As
in different periods of the season different flowers
bloom, so yesterday and to-morrow shall call out
different graces to the common service and beauty
of the one person. The graces need one another
for setting and support ; each is truly each when
in the midst of all. It is one life.
He of whom John the Baptist said, " God giveth
not the Spirit by measure unto him," was emi
nently good and without sin. The Spirit filled
Moses and he was wise, filled Joshua and he was
bold, filled Samson and he was stout, filled the
Lord and he was good. Character in him was
preeminent. Take his hatred of moral evil. On
occasion he was greatly indignant at obstructive
hypocrites. He seemed to abhor especially cant
ing pretense, the old men or the young men" who
tithe mint, anise, and cummin, but neglect the
weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy,
and faith." On the other hand, he had that op
posite and gentle virtue of tenderness. He wept
over Jerusalem. He said, as he was going to cruci
fixion, "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for
me, but for yourselves, and for your children."
He was full of feeling for the poor, despised ;
yet a weeping, penitent woman had crept be
hind him at the feast in the Pharisee's house.
He graciously drew Peter back after his going
away.

A GOOD LIFE 1 75
Jesus shows what the presence of the Spirit
can do where the way is all open. As he took
his disciples to the lake-side, the grain- fields, the
grass-fields, and the mountain, with their fullness
of spiritual suggestion, so now does the Spirit
take us to Matthew and Mark and Luke and John ;
and the Saviour there leads and teaches the whole
body of his people, who shall sooner or later there
spell out the whole lesson of moral truth that
he taught ; nor rest until the whole revelation of
Scripture concerning goodness in him unfolds to
their view.
The extent of Christian goodness is a mooted
question. The answer seems to depend much
on what we mean by goodness. Christians will
agree in much where they each understand what
the other means. All admit that in the child of
God there need be no rushing floods, with their
devastating work ; no packing of sand and gravel
over fair fields, and a whole goodly growth of the
graces borne down by an overflow of the great
river of sin. All admit that the work of grace is
too often incomplete. In the world of crystals
many an individual crystal has had its free course
hindered. In the paths of the planets, the won
derful circles are somewhat eccentric, and each
planet is somewhat uneven in its movement. So
many a Christian has been drawn on one side by
this influence and on another side by that ; by

176 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
heredity, education, and circumstance ; by infirm
ity, prejudice, and dislike. We drink not enough
of the rivers of water; we are touched all too
lightly by the flaming tongues of fire. Our re
ception, by faith, of Him who is the life, is not
full enough ; we still must go on " perfecting
holiness." Let us look forward here. Many a Christian
is now but as a bank of sand just above the waves
or as that volcanic peak which rises as an island
from the floor of the ocean to far above the sur
face. Not so hereafter. When this continent
rose above the sea, summit after summit appeared
from below upon the waters, making island after
island. These islands broadened and stretched
toward one another. More and more the land
rose and the waters receded until the continent
had risen from the deep sea, compact and with but
one ocean shore. So the Christian's whole broad
level shall rise in the other world; his breadth
and height and solidity of character, his greatness.
Such are some of the essential and elementary
conceptions of goodness ; some of the qualities of
this fair work of God and man within the soul.
Such are some of the definite elements of that
kind of life which more than aught else manifests
God's glory upon earth and sets forth his praise.

CHAPTER XXII.
A LOVING LIFE.
THE Christian life is a sea with many currents
and multitudinous waves. One manifestation of
this great and varied life is love. We all know
what beauty is in charm ; such is love. We all
know what power and skill are in use ; such is
love. A hard, a very hard life for us human
beings is this loving life to lead, in all its ways.
The absolute source of a loving life is God.
He gives to his own this his great- heartedness,
this his richest gift, this greater than physical
power, this greater than intellectual power, this
loving nature ; something more lovely, more de
sirable, than aught else he could give. It is his
own great impulse and nature. We read, " Every
one that loveth is born of God ;" and again, " He
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
in him." When God fills and dominates him, he
loves, line for line, as God loves. As the moon
is in perpetual attendance upon the earth, so is
he who loves giving perpetual attention to others
i77

178 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
than himself. And this because the Holy Ghost
is within him, helping him, winnowing him, and
filling all his life with the buoyancy and the
music of heaven. The earth when dry and
barren, as on the great plains, is refreshed and
made alive by coursing it with canals from living
streams. So he who gets into connection with
the Divine Being gets the spirit of the divine
love. And there are the motives to love. Light is
ever necessary to the earth in its various beau
ties, in its fertile soils, its numerous fields and
woods and gardens. Light is ever necessary
to all flowers and fruits, to all animals that
roam at will or yield to man's control. So with
us, knowledge is an instrument of love. All
through the New Testament we have a set of
peculiarly Christian motives given us to go by;
reasons of action to be especially borne in mind
as eminently strong and wise and good and in
harmony with the nature of things. Here is one :
" God is love." He hates no person. The spirit
of hate is a spirit of evil ; it poisons the soul and
sometimes the body. It is the spirit of the devil,
for we read, " The devil is come down unto you,
having great wrath." Here is another: "We
love, because He first loved us." Our Creator,
he loved us before we knew ourselves. Our
continual Benefactor, he encircles us and has no

A LOVING LIFE 179
distance from us. Our Friend, he is sympathetic,
expressive, and effective. As the daughter grows
to her mother's size, to renew her mother's youth
and beauty, so in this matter of love we are to
grow to the " measure of the stature of God in
Christ Jesus." God has taught us to love, im
pelled us to love, shamed us to love. Here is a
third of the peculiarly Scripture motives to love :
" Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, for
giving one another, even as God for Christ's sake
hath forgiven you." Love, because God shows
so much love as to forgive all, forget all, pass
over your shortcomings, your outgoings of evil,
and think a world of you. In general, we learn
from the Bible that we are to love all men be
cause they bear the divine image ; because Christ
died for them and would save them ; and finally
because it pleases God that we should love them.
If we love him, we willingly incline to love any
thing he wishes us to love.
One of the signs which distinguished Jesus as
full of the Spirit was an inextinguishable flame
of love. No man ever had more of pure and
strong affection for others, for persons few and
persons many, those of his own friends, his own
company, his own country, and those of the world.
His soul went out and came very near to men.
He saw their necessities, their sorrows, their sen
sibilities, their worth. He was genial, gentle, with

180 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
a great and subduing tenderness, an inexpressible
feeling. He was willing to die for human interests.
He is the model of a disinterested, controlling
affection for others. The vast and quiet and
strong intellect of this Man of Nazareth was driven
by love. He was a mighty exemplar of love in
a mighty man. Suppose Napoleon Bonaparte with
all his force and skill had possessed something
of the same unselfishness, something of the same
vast philanthropy. As we know Sirius, Arcturus,
and the sun itself by their brightness, so we know
the Spirit by his working this love in his and espe
cially in Jesus — this love, the grandest type of
divine character.
My thought is that if you are born in Christ,
and abide in him and think on him, you will
catch his style of loving ; you will get under the
grand old law of love, get within the sweep of its
power. The greatest moral spirit of this universe
will catch you up, and in it you will attain to your
greatest in gift, in grace, in blessedness.
I turn to the nature of love. Love 'is to be
genial and appreciative; is to have good- will,
sympathy ; to have strong affinities and personal
attachments. It is the very opposite of that
selfishness which heeds not the law it breaks or
the feelings it hurts or the injury it does. The
natural world seems to tell of love in the shining
of the sun, in the sparkling of the stars, in the

A LOVING LIFE 181
rippling of the water, in the beauty of the flow
ers. The human world seems to tell of love in
the various gladness in man's heart, and in his
much fellowship with his fellow-man.
Love is communicative ; its nature is to go out,
to reach after others. Not only has the flower
beauty and fragrance, but it has a thousand little
pollen-grains that it scatters by every wind that
touches it; it goes on scattering them with
boundless prodigality. So is love scattering con
tinually. Another delightful characteristic of a loving life
is gentleness. Even in his thought one " think -
eth no evil." This is getting down to the very
soul. Then speech and action are gentle. One
has a sense of the everlasting trouble and pathos
of things ; of the general friction, the wear and
tear, the pain.
Another choice manifestation of a loving life is
forbearance ; forbearance with the weak, the ig
norant, the lax; forbearance under neglect or
abuse. In Colossians we are bidden to put on
long-suffering ; to put it on and wear it as we do a
garment. Jesus bore with the apostles, with Judas,
with the Jews. He was despised and rejected
of men, but bore it patiently ; still retained his
affection for men, for the Jews. He felt for the
end he foresaw from their course, and prayed,
" Father, forgive them ; for they know not what

1 82 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
they do." Was it not for love that he was silent
and endured? Love is forgiving. It has this
nobleness. One with full soul answers to Paul's
inspired feeling, " As God for Christ's sake hath
forgiven you, so also do ye." He will truly
pray, " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our
debtors." What ! is he in the fullness of the gifts
and the glory of God to indulge in little hatreds?
A loving life is also characterized by a rever
ential spirit. One has an appreciative regard for
all persons, forms, and ways of worth ; for every
thing that is true or beautiful or good, in whom
soever or in whatsoever found ; be it manhood or
motherhood ; be it patience or self-denial in devo
tion to others; be it animal or human heroism.
And love may rise to enthusiasm ; may rise to
unexpected and enthusiastic ways. It may live
and defy ridicule and criticism, as did the woman
who washed the Saviour's feet with her tears and
wiped them with her hair. Love may become so
strong as to have certain freedoms, even as the
climbing wild vine takes liberties with the tree :
winding round the trunk, crawling round the
branches, spreading and drooping, and rising and
festooning. One in his love to Christ may feel
as gleeful and as cheerful as in holiday the chil
dren who visit lake or woods, or climb the hill,
or wander down the stream. He is not careless,
not going backward, not crossing the will of God ;

A LOVING LIFE 183
but he has the freedom of smiles and laughter, of
songs and greetings. In some things love will
take its own course. Some in that which they
see and feel spring out of and forget themselves.
Zaccheus restored fourfold and divided the re
mainder with the poor. His love to the Lord
that had saved him was in the might of a new
great nature. A great revolution was wrought
in him, and he joyfully made thorough work of
it. There is a love that goes beyond law, as
did the love of Mary, the sister of Lazarus. In
the hunger of her love for her great Lord, and in
the beauty and blessedness of it, " then took
Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very
costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped
his feet with her hair;" shrinking, but so preoc
cupied, so devoted, so grateful, so filled with the
love and help of Jesus, that she forgot the cold
and critical observers, and for Jesus, Jesus only,
whom she saw, she did her daring, costly deed.
The affection touched him deeply.
Let me now speak of the objects of love. It
is of this life in God as of the life of a continent :
the range is very great, the range of thought and
feeling, of speech and action. Yet the great prin
ciple is love and the great object is God. Here
is the law and the gospel and Christian experience.
When as in a bright and breezy day one looks upon
the shadows of the clouds sweeping across the

1 84 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
landscape, and catches the inspiration of the whole
scene, he can say that he loves nature. A person
elate, looking upon the infinite sky and seeing
bright stars shine out in the warm heavens of a
summer night, can feel to love what he beholds.
So here, when one sees and appreciates, he loves
Him who among beings is as the sun among the
planets; gets attracted to him centrally with all
the soul.
By the law of gravity the planets swing round
the sun and the satellites swing round the planets.
By the law of gravity all bodies, if unsupported,
fall downward, and if supported, press downward.
The great force, a falling force, a drawing force,
both in space and on the earth, is a force of at
traction. Of necessity there must be such a law
if the universe is to exist. Now when I describe
this law I somewhat describe the law of love to
God. Or, again, so intense is the vital energy in
the movements within a tree as to draw the sap
from the roots upward through stem and branches.
Now this force in the organic world illustrates the
rising of the affectionate heart Godward, the draw
ing, inclining, moving of the soul Godward, sim
ply, regularly, naturally. Yes, the Christian loves
God. When it is fulfilled in you, " I will dwell in
them, and walk in them," you first of all love
God ; you like to read of, hear of, think of him ;

A LOVING LIFE 185
you worship and serve him. Your treasure ac
cumulates, your companionship increases in him,
the measure of your soul is full with the thought
of him, you are aglow with affection. You sum
up things in him, even as the eye all the things
of the landscape into one picture : the crooked
with the straight, the points and the planes, the
forms and the colors ; no error, no confusion, and
not an object missing. So you see the whole
world as one and in connection with God. You
see it not as it is, the thing itself, but as he made
it and would have it, and works in it and for it.
But you also perceive him, so secret and yet
finding his way in, so a comfort and safeguard,
so wonderful in his love, so adorable in himself.
You love him.
But the Holy Spirit within you is " in power "
in another direction. " Christ liveth in you " to
move you out unto others, your fellow-creatures ;
to actualize them to you ; to give you strong
affection for them. The divine action on you
will give you many movings toward them. That
personal force, that dominating influence, will ex
pand your mind and enlarge your heart concern
ing them. You will go out and stay out of your
self. Here come, as from nowhere else, justice,
brotherhood, humanity, in this world ; interest in
persons and in masses of persons, in communities
and churches and lands in their sum, in their

1 86 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
great amounts of character and happiness. To
him who is moved of the Spirit every man signi
fies something, and people are the most precious
things in the world. He is like salt and leaven
when in contact with that which has affinity, ever
putting himself forth.
You love even the uncongenial and unlovely,
yes, even him who dislikes you, frets at you,
and opposes you. You even bring dislike and
hatred into subjection to Christ. With God in
you, you may well begin to look out and love all
things, your indifference to others be ended, your
dislikes and spites and revenges, your coldness
and sullenness be over. New visions are in your
sky ; all you meet are lovely ; you have come
into great possessions ; you have realized great
hopes ; you love all men. You have charity in
all its various kinds. One illustration was given
by Jesus in his parable of the Good Samaritan.
You have courtesy in all its various ways. You
will tend spontaneously to right manner. Flow
ers want no rules to be fragrant ; springs want no
rules to bubble up. The woman who anointed
the feet of Jesus in recognition of what he had
done for her did it without compulsion or com
mand, did it freely and naturally. In short, tell
him who would do his duty to love. It is the
simplest way by which to know our duty, and
the strongest power by which to do our duty.

A LOVING LIFE 187
You are to love fellow- Christians. Were you
away in Africa, a man from your own section
would be wonderfully attractive. He would
stand for home, stand for all the friends there.
So the child of God stands for God, the people
of God stand for God. And you love them some
what as you love him. Christ said, " As I have
loved you, that ye also love one another." His
affection is the standard. No conception by
glorified spirits or by angels can grasp the mag
nitude of his great loving, its breadth and com
pass, its depth and endurance. It is a sky, it is
an ocean. When the final and heavenly state
is reached, what reconciliations, rectifications,
understandings; what affections, what forgive
ness, when we, if we get to that, are delivered
from our delusions about others, and when what
is hidden in them from us shall come forth!
Aye, the reach of our hearts shall be much farther
than it is here ; we shall feel the force of others'
attraction much more than we do now. We
shall comprehend more, be more ardent, more
generous. As to its place, love is the chief thing. It is
the great character of God, the great character
of Christ. In the generations that sin and suffer
and die, he bears their toil and struggle upon his
heart, their sin and sorrows. Love is the great
character of all the noblest of earth. Human

1 88 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
love is the fairest flower that blooms on human
soil, and spiritual love is the fairest flower that
blooms on spiritual soil. In the circle of the
graces love sits as queen. Of all the lives that
one can lead not one can be as good as this. A
thoroughly affectionate nature is the finest in
existence. The whole being is filled and charged
with a love deep and glad, or sad, an abounding
love, a love holding one and taking him up and
carrying him forward. He is the finest man we
know of— he who appreciates others, sympathizes
with them, helps them. Most heavenlike is he
who lets life through all the compass of his years
be a life of love. Most meet is he for the in
heritance of the children of light. That country
is so blessed because all there have received fully
of the Master's spirit. It indites their songs, it
creates their fellowship, it gives their rest in God
and his people. Love there is at its broadest
and deepest; has all its varied activity, all its
forms and extensions. Love results there in the
glory of a fellowship real and deep, making
blessed every participant. Love there is ad
vanced to a heavenly flame, the glory of which
is over all that land and ever shall be.
As to its use : we need this love to God, to
be the soul of all patience and prayer, the soul of
all praise and service. Love settles a good many
cases of conscience, where the thought of duty

A LOVING LIFE 189
runs to morbidness and sophistry. It does away
with a great deal of legality, a great deal of pre
judice, of contentiousness, of pride of opinion,
all of which foster ignorance and error. It helps
a great deal of obedience, making it not from
fear or reward, but from the heart, and therefore
easy. And we need love, to be the power to make us
see, in a glow of our own making, those who are
about us ; to make us see them in a splendor and
a beauty both real and unreal. Love is a talis-
manic power to turn what we touch into what
we will. Such often is earthly love, such is
heavenly love. It leads us to glorify ; it ideal
izes. Many people are now regarded in a way
which is quite different from that in which they
were once regarded. Many a person appears fair
and bright. The sunlight falls on this and that
fair scene of fellowship. The whole land of life
and work is made to seem a glorious land. The
days of love are good and peaceful. We feast in
mind and soul; we are set free from much of
evil ; the noises of strife die away. We rise and
fall as a vessel on the sea; a fair wind catches
and carries us, and eagerly we sail forward and
outward into the boundless waters.
But the great blessing of love is beyond your
self, is upon those you love, is upon the world
you live in. The appearances, the ministries

190 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
and intercessions of this exalted life certainly
benefit. A thoroughly loving life is to those in
contact with it a vision, a gladness, and a gain.
Thus men may be " rooted and grounded in
love." This love need be no mystery, no unat
tainable possession ; it may fill you with desire
and power to go among people. God clears the
vision, invigorates the heart, makes easy the way.
When once the road over the Simplon was made,
how easy to go over the Alps! — winding slopes
instead of abrupt precipices, a smooth carriage
way instead of a difficult foot-path. So now
how easy the perceptions, purposes, feelings of
love, the passage from narrowness to breadth
and from shallowness to depth, the expanding
to take in many and the dividing to take in each !
In a general way you were kindly and friendly,
but this is more. The rudest savage reckons upon
his fingers, adds up with pebbles and shells. As
time goes on the tribe receives culture; arith
metic develops, until mathematics in still higher
forms is born and grows. So love in the heart
has had a scientific development. As when the
night is over and with fresh bodies we enter upon
a new day, so now. Yesterday has come to an
end, the old scores are crossed out. The book
of life has leaves to be turned over one after
another. When " God dwelleth in us, and his
love is perfected in us," we have turned over

A LOVING LIFE 19 1
those leaves which tell how, as the days have
gone by, we have learned to dislike this and that
thing, to hate this and that person. There is a
reconcilement of all differences. Whatever may
be outside, rough or smooth, graceful or uncouth,
pure or defiled, we like men. More and more
let men broaden and stretch toward one another ;
more and more let the land rise and the waters
fall, until a continent appears, in all the life of
which love shall reign.

CHAPTER XXIII. .
CHRISTIAN HOPE.
To have hope deep and strong, now manifest
in this and now in that, is a part of human nature.
It makes up materially the brightness and motive
power of human life. It is a deep and powerful
force for life and health and length of days. He
who has given up all hope and yielded to despair
is forlorn indeed. Certain pines grow on the most
meager soil of sand or rock — live and thrive on
many a low island, on many a tropical shore —
and in addition beautify the landscape with the
green of their leaves and the crimson of their
fruit. Thus flourish the hopes of him who lives
the hidden life ; lives in intimate union with God ;
who says of him, "Thou art my hiding-place."
Hope characterizes the Bible. All the prom
ises lead to hope, all the Psalms are full of it, half
of the prophecies create it, the Gospels are full
of it, the epistles are full of it. Notwithstanding
present clouds or darkness, the Bible writers never
waver in their faith in love and bounty at the last.
192

CHRISTIAN HOPE 1 93
As were the children of Israel, so ever are all
the children of God — a people of hope : singer
and prophet and apostle on the one hand, and
that prodigious number of saints without name
or notice of men on the other hand.
The Lord is ever drawing us to something yet
to come. His baptism looks forward : " For if
we have been planted together in the likeness of
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his
resurrection." If we have the germ, we shall
have the stem, the branches, and the leaves; we
shall have the full size and the full substance of
the tree. The Lord's Supper looks forward :
" For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink
this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he
come." It is as the bud in winter, the little single
bud that in spring shall open into stem and leaves.
And so in the history of the church : ever Abram
is going to be Abraham ; ever the Jew expects
the Messiah, and when he is come ever the Chris
tian expects him to come again.
The early preachers constantly stimulated
themselves and their hearers by the prizes here
after. Paul says, " I press toward the mark for
the prize of the high calling of God." Even
Jesus, " for the joy that was set before him, en
dured the cross."
God is the source and support of hope, first,
in being in part its object. Heart and loyalty

194 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
and faithfulness are to him. And the soul says,
"Thou, Lord, art my hope." You are, we will
say, using his instrumentalities : then be not fear
ful and despondent, but secure and sanguine,
even enthusiastic. Your very end and design,
your spirit, are from him and for him : then be
animated, sustained, and carried forward. The
Holy Ghost in his ordinances is like a great
mountain. From springs within and eternal snows
without flow down streams to water the valleys
below, to spread over the neighboring plains;
streams of various size, making together a whole
system of flowing, draining, irrigating waters —
the great benefit of a large country.
But God is also the source of hope by his in
dwelling. He persuades us, moves, makes us to
hope ; leads us to look forward sometimes even
with assurance of hope ; even works in his own
a prophetic belief — " revealeth his secret unto his
servants the prophets."
Indeed, every other grace is creative of hope ;
such is faith, faith in God and faith in relation
to persons and things, events and situations yet
coming. No one who lives but oftentimes has
to wait. Sometimes, in the waiting, faith fails.
We read it in the Psalms, read it in Jeremiah,
see it a little in John the Baptist : sight, reason,
faith, failing. The delay seems final, the entangle
ment complete ; prayer is not answered ; the anch-

CHRISTIAN HOPE 195
or drags. But if, temporarily thus despondent,
a return to God takes place, there is a revival of
hope. Never does the man divinely filled become
desperate indeed, never is that sad experience his.
And ofteri he is swallowed up in his beliefs, in his
hopes ; he takes no account of counter-statements,
counter-appearances ; the anchor holds. When
the sea is vexed with a great wind, when the
tides seek the shore' and all the coast is roaring,
then, amid the tearing sea and sky, the ship, with
split sails and drenched decks, does not strike, for
her anchor holds. She is not driven ashore for
all the weather and the sea. So the believer's
vessel need never get unmanageable in any gale
that blows. Extremely bad weather the ship ma)^
now and then have, but it need never be a wreck.
At the worst, on the moving sea the anchor takes
hold on the unmoving land. We read, " Which
hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure
and steadfast, and which entereth into that within
the veil" — that is, to "where Christ sitteth on
the right hand of God." Here is a hope that
" maketh not ashamed."
Then, again, love is a support of hope. We
read, " God is not unrighteous to forget your work
and labor of love. . . And we desire that every
one of you do show the same diligence to the full
assurance of hope." The activities of love make
a person hopeful. Diligence in loving deeds tends

196 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
decidedly that way, and hope becomes brighter
and brighter. So, also, Christians know that
prayer sometimes has in it that which makes
them "rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
As to the objects of hope. Those who have
the divine indwelling expect even material things,
the necessaries of life, because, in the first place,
encouraged by the Word. " The poor commit-
teth himself unto thee ; thou art the helper of
the fatherless." " Casting all your care upon
him " — making no exception. " Seek ye first the
kingdom of God, and all these things shall be
added unto you." Then, again, he who is the
Lord's has warmth and richness and imagination
given even to his material hopes by the thought
that the Lord has named him in baptism, com
forted him in ordinances, served him in provi
dences. So, then, some Scripture is sealed to
him ; some season or help, some hill Mizar is re
called ; or some deep feeling exists of itself that
God has made the case his care.
Those in the Spirit need not despair of relief
from trouble ; may hope that the Vine will ever
be sending sap into the branch, however bruised
it be ; that the Lord will carry up and on and over
unto the end of life ; over enemies, temptations,
disappointments, bereavements ; will cause to
mount above all the low levels. Does the thunder
storm come over the lake and catch the little

CHRISTIAN HOPE 197
craft? Christ is in the ship. His people are to
him the most precious things in the world. Then
say and sing with the psalmist, " Hope thou in
God, for I shall yet praise him."
So, also, you who have " Christ in you " may
look for continuing grace. The sea-anemone
survives boiling and freezing and cutting in two ;
such are the powers of self-preservation in that
little animal. There is the perseverance of the
saints, the kingdom of heaven in the heart, strong
est by nature of all kingdoms. You may hope
to have God ever reaching you by the means of
grace — by prayer seasons and Bible reading, by
Lord's days and church servicer.
Then, too, if in the Lord, you have promise of
increasing grace: more enjoyment of the Word,
more dwelling in the world invisible, more con
stant vision of the Master.
The Christian has hope of a world to come, to
which this is as the circle of the valley is to the
circle of the mountain-top. This is as when early
morning retains somewhat of the darkness. The
light is pale, gray, and tender, and sometimes the
twilight lingers long. Scripture symbolism tells
us of a better country, a city, a house, a home.
And in the vision there is substantial truth ; not
a dusty and shadowy land, a bloodless, pale, and
spectral body. Even as while we are busy in the
field, the house, or by the way, we occasionally

198 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
look up into the great sky, so do we occasionally
see the land that is very wide. " I will behold
thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied,
when I awake, with thy likeness." "We shall
be like him; for we shall see him as he is."
As the buried seed has, after germination, hope
to reach sun and air; hope of root and stem,
leaf and blossom ; hope to be a living plant, some
bright form amid all the magnificence of earthly
forms, so when " He dwelleth in you " you may
look forward to some transcendent glory. As the
fading leaf has the bud of the future leaf, that
shall have form when the present leaf is formless,
so they who are in Him who, though without
form, is behind all form, can say, " We know
that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
In nature, everything is going forward to some
thing else, but it is in much an eternal cycle, as
Ecclesiastes has it : the stream running dry to fill
again ; the seed becoming a plant, to leave again a
seed. But the Spirit has power, life, and immor
tality. So, then, weak or failing, hope in this
divine indwelling; hope in the Lord of nature,
grace, and glory ; and rest not until the whole
revelation of his coming unfolds to your view.
Let the wind of the Spirit even now arise and
clear away the mists that hang over the valley.

CHRISTIAN HOPE 199
Live in the light, let it in in streams, diffuse it
everywhere. If your windows are broad enough,
clear enough, high enough, you will have this
light of the coming glory of God. In that light
we shall stand in the light of a thousand lamps,
of a thousand electric arcs ; we shall stand in the
light of the sun. Well indeed may we, in the
reality of God and Christ and salvation, be the
subjects of hope. Well may we have hope, if
possessed of all this world of the indwelling, with
all the saving works, the natural and supernatural
wonders.

CHAPTER XXIV.
PATIENCE.
PATIENCE is a manly, dignified way of going
on ; is self-control under provocation, forbearance
with greater and lesser evils, the ignoring or en
during of them. It implies composure of mind ;
the absence of all tumult of thought, all excess
of passion, all unseemliness or excitement of con
duct, all feeling unkindly toward that which has
created our trouble, all unforgiving feeling, all
displeasure with persons or things. It is the con
trary to that feeling which nurses the grudge, the
dissatisfaction, the complaining. There are be-
setments; there is no apparent answer to prayer;
there is work delayed. Patience is to bear up
bravely in all these conditions and events.
Patience is a high and difficult state. It is
somewhat a finishing work, after you have done
all that you can, to stand and endure that which
you cannot help any more than you can help the
wind's blowing. You may moan and groan, and
fly out, but you cannot stop some persons or

PATIENCE 201
things any more than you can stop the rain.
God has to be patient and you have to be. You
make up your mind to endure that great rebellion
which is going on, so far as you cannot stop it.
Jesus said, " Offenses must come." They are in
the arrangements. A patient demeanor in suffer
ing is a fine test, an excellent criterion of charac
ter; fortitude in bearing burdens and pains. And
to this great state the divine indwelling is a con
stant help, a help to all natural patience.
There are natural provisions of defense against
evil. You notice that nature is full of every sort
of protective device. The sandy coasts of the
North Sea preserve themselves from wasting
by the running roots of vast masses of creeping
plants; so the dunes of the Bay of Biscay by
forests of man's planting. Every herb of the
field has these devices in root and stem, in leaf
and flower. Every animal has strength or speed
or craft. Every Christian has his protection.
When Christiana and the children set out for the
Celestial City, a special guardian was given them,
one Great-heart. Your native powers are a help
to you against your enemies. Society around is
a help. You are far from being naked and de
fenseless. Even so may we be patient because of
our gracious equipment; patient with our imper
fect selves and patient with this imperfect world.
In the graces we are patient ; this in resolution,

202 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
consecration ; this in faith, confidence in God that
all his paths are mercy and truth ; this in hope,
this in general hope, or in the specific hope of
removing or lessening or of help in enduring
the evil. " It is good that a man should both hope
and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."
"Be patient," said James : " for the coming of the
Lord draweth nigh ' ' — a great lifting off and up,
a mighty change ; the Lord fully manifest. You
shall see him as not now, receive him as not now,
be filled and surrounded as not now.
In the means of grace we are patient. David
in his depression prayed ; so Asaph and Job and
Paul. Many a person has become patient in read
ing the Bible. The pleasure and the rest in this
are as for the tired to sit on the shore or bathe in
the sea.
In the union of Christ with his own they are
patient in all the might and the blessedness of pa
tience ; in abiding in him who works not so much
upon us mechanically as in us dynamically; in
him who works in us as the sap in the tree or
the blood in the body. In physiology is the
great understanding of pathology; in the organs
in health the understanding of them in disease.
In the divinely filled person is the great power
to endure with composure all evil, is a trium
phant force. You so receive as to rest from all
improper reasonings, all undue desires, all dis-

PATIENCE 203
quieting fears, all excessive conflict. You have
entered into all patience. "Job sinned not, nor
charged God foolishly." David said of Shimei:
" Let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto
him, Curse David." The ancient poet, with the
Spirit in him, said in his gloom, plaintively and
pitifully, " I was dumb, I opened not my mouth ;
because thou didst it." But our Lord is the most
remarkable instance of patience. His was a pa
tience in very frequent exercise, in various direc
tions also, and to a very high degree. He was in
more than one wild sea and driven by more than
one storm-wind ; tried over Israel and over many
things as no words can tell ; and yet he was pa
tient. He was tried over much beside wandering
Israel in our old world ; over the mischiefs men
make and their cruelties; over the appealing of
those who suffer, and those who are dreading
what is to come ; over those who are shut in and
cannot get out ; over the ships that go down, the
sinking of so much. The Father was with him
in his experiences of sorrow; and in him was
patience in all its form and color, all its bright
ness — a living grace. By the spiritual imagina
tion to apprehend this strong patience of Jesus,
in all he said and did and was, is to enter into
the realm of the spiritual and behold things which
are unseen and eternal. So likewise can he be
patient who can say, "Christ liveth in me."

204 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Again, bear up because in this interior life you
have help against the limitationsof your nature, the
imperfections of your training or that of others;
help, in short, to bear all the various evils that try
your patience. Some men seem to think that all is
fate, that instead of arms and hands and helpers
from the unseen there are only walls. No; we
are not buried alive in a tomb. He who while
immanent is transcendent, while in the world is
above the world, is more than a geometer who
draws the wonderful curves of all the orbits of
the solar system ; is more than a machinist who
has set up that system. He is more than a God
of law ; he is a God of thoughtful, sleepless love.
In proportion as it is understood that he is free,
sensitive, and loving do we get rid of the idea of
fate, of an eternal fixedness of things. As we
are changing our view of the fixedness of nature,
so may we change our view of the fixedness of
God, and feel that he is none the less perfect.
His is not an eternal, unchanging nature in every
thing. In him thoughts come and go, feelings
rise and fall, changes take place. He feels with
us in all our toil and trial; is ready to relieve
us in all that puzzles or distresses us : this
going out of light in the young man's soul, this
darkness of error, this seeing the face we love up
turned in death. Let us " have the patience of
hope."

PATIENCE 205
Many are the promises of him who is unseen
of us; every promise, too, a virtual, a special
power, and to be counted on every time the con
ditions are met — something as sure as any natural
law. With clearer insight of these promises you
get a firmer grasp; with comprehension comes
energy, power to hold on ; with the broader mind
comes the broader heart, and vice versa; with
the better perception comes the greater help and
sympathy, given and received. There are times
when patience abounds, because the believer is
stirred by new views, stirred by revelations of
the Lord.
Because of these promised helps we are patient.
Take the guiding. In hindrances, hesitations,
hurts, you patiently wait, because you pray with
the psalmist, " Lead me ... in thy righteousness
because of mine enemies." You await the Lord's
leading because the sweet singer says, " If I take
the wings of the morning, and dwell in the utter
most parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand
lead me." Another who in praying but formu
lates the prayer of all believers, pleads, " For thy
name's sake lead me, and guide me."
Take the guarding. You are in dangers patient
in God, the sure defense of his people. "The
name of the Lord is a strong tower : the righteous
runneth into it, and is safe; " safe within the
strong walls. In vain would the marauders of the

206 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
desert assault the convent walls on Mount Sinai for
full a thousand years. Sometimes his enemies do
not even know where to look for him, he is hid
den, he who " dwelleth in the secret place of the
Most High." Truly may he be tranquil in their
hunting. Thus did ancient saints call up in song
their deliverances ; thus laugh in the joy of their
escapes, and exult. There are lions and dogs,
and bulls of Bashan ; there are fire and water, and
snares and plots ; yet may men burst out in praise :
their Redeemer is. so great, their redemption so
much. Take the general keeping. " The Lord is thy
keeper;" in summer or winter, in health or sick
ness, in work or out of work, at home or among
strangers, on the land or on the water ; thy keeper
in body and name and estate and soul. Yes, let
him be patient who has "to eat of the hidden
manna," and has the "white stone, and in the
stone, a new name written, which no man knoweth
saving he that receiveth it."
So then, " Let us run with patience the race
that is set before us, looking unto Jesus." He
can help in all the pain, the tediousness, the dis
appointment, and the struggle. " Strengthened,"
said the Apostle, " with all might, according to
God's glorious power, unto all patience." You
go through this world like a ship through the
rolling, beating waves ; thumped and pounded it

PATIENCE 207
is, strained even ; so do you bear up and on,
over want and pain and obstacle. Do not enter
into too much contention with disorder. " The
mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed ;
but my kindness shall not depart from thee, . . .
saith the Lord." It is faithful, perennial, perma
nent ; be it morning or evening, June or January,
daylight or dark, quiet or stormy, it shall never
depart.be never- failing but ever-prevailing. "Thy
faithfulness shalt thou establish in the very hea
vens;" not in the earth, for that is swept with
storm, covered with flood, burned by fire, shaken
by earthquake — the earth shall pass away ; but in
the heavens of God, in his being and character,
promise and performance.

CHAPTER XXV.
FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD.
We have various companionships that we form
in the neighborhood, the community, the church,
or among those of our calling. We have quite a
little of our life and happiness in these, and some
thing of our profit. Each of these is proper and
somewhat peculiar. But there is a companion
ship which in beauty and honor, in life and growth,
in general blessedness, is ahead of all these.
When you once get adjusted to it, there is no
companionship equal to companionship with God.
John said, " Truly our fellowship is with the
Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." They
to whom John addressed these words were out
wardly of little account, they had no great com
panions, they were in frequent cases accounted
as the offscouring of all things. Yet they had a
very desirable and honorable fellowship " with
the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." To
this Paul adds "fellowship with the Spirit."
208

FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 209
No mere bit of life in nature, no animal, no
mere man has this companionship ; only he who
has the divine indwelling; in him is effectually
created this intimacy. We read, " God is faith
ful, through whom ye were called into the fellow
ship of his Son." God has given this revelation,
this openness of himself, and these impulses on
your part. The Spirit gives his life and activity
and calls out yours.
It is a great thing to have nature with us in
all its varied processes and industries; in all its
exuberance and infinite variety, its green, its
growth, and all its ripening product. But it is
much greater to have the God of nature with us ;
the free Spirit who is above nature, not shut up
by it ; the God the singers of Israel sang of ; the
God the New Testament continually speaks of.
You may walk with him like Enoch. You may
come out of a narrow into a broad world ; may
come out of a cell into the broad divine life. It
fills nature, it fills you. He who is in sun and
moon, in sky and earth, in the air that blows and
the water that flows, is in especial connection with
his own. The Spirit comes and goes. He car
ries from God to us and from us to God, even as
the wind carries the moisture back and forth in
an eternal round from sea to land and land to
sea. No finite spirit is deprived of the privilege
of intercourse with the Infinite Spirit. The

2IO THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Father of all spirits waits to enter into commu
nion with any spirit.
In much we are all of us alone, yet there need
be no such thing, as interior solitude. He who is
in the Lord is never absolutely alone. Isolated
he may be, secluded in some remote place, some
room or field or piece of wood, or along some
road, but he need never be away from Christ.
He may ever travel on and on, bright with the
divine brightness, helped with the divine help,
and in company with the Divine Being. In those
passages through this world where no friend is
with us, nor kinsman, Christ is with us. You
may be sick, or losing what you value, or be in
grave difficulties; the Lord is with you. You
are not able to go down into the grave, to fol
low one who is gone, but you may discern the
Lord standing beside you as did Mary at the
mouth of the sepulcher. In that passage to the
next world, in which passage your friends can
not go with you, you need never be absolutely
alone. Christ can be ever with you. He said
to his workers, " Lo, I am with you alway." He
takes away the depression, the loneliness, just as
the swollen river sweeps away the drift of its
banks. Jesus who came to earth has come to us.
He who was born in the grotto- stable is born in
us. It is for you and me, like the shepherds, to

FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 211
see him. It is for you and me, like the twelve,
to speak with him.
I pass to the nature of fellowship with God.
He who has it is single and he is double. There
is the human and there is the divine being. These
have wonderful connection, correspondence, join
ing, close coordination. The companionship of
neighbors, friends, and relations poorly images it.
The tenderness and affection of our earthly com
munions poorly image it. The beauty and peace,
the wonder and glory of the marriage commu
nion of earth do not fully represent this heavenly
communion with us of the Lord of earth and
heaven. In this fellowship there is nearness. Communi
cation with a friend afar off, by letter or telegram
or verbal message, is something; but being face
to face is far more.
In this fellowship there is affection, first, on
God's part. His affection has depth like the
ocean, extent like the sky, freeness like the air.
It moves in creation, it moves in providence, it
moves in grace. Christ's love is not all pure
benevolence, a love of good-will, of benefaction,
but is in part a love of affection. He said, " I go
and prepare a place for you ; that where I am,
there ye may be also." There is love on your
part. In a certain way nature seeks God for her

212 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
life, her growth, her rest. In a certain way every
one seeks God to taste the meat and drink he
gives; and sometimes, consciously or uncon
sciously, seeks not only the gifts but the Giver
himself. The Christian loves him, the Heavenly
Father, and cries with David, " O Lord my
rock, be not silent to me." The Christian has
admiration, contemplation, benediction for Christ ;
remembers his birthday and his death-day; has
a voice calling in prayer and resounding in praise ;
has in all his being regard for him who was born
in Bethlehem, in far from blessed state, but now
lives " Above all glory raised;
Friend of sinners is his name."
In this fellowship there is actual interchange
all the day long. " I will come in to him and
will sup with him, and he with me." Some of it
is while reading the Bible, some in prayers here
and there and many times, some in singing, some
at the Lord's table; here intimacy, refreshing,
eminently communion ; hence we say, " the Com
munion." There is this interchange in all the
regular formal offices of the church, and also in
all irregular ways ; the opening and speech of the
soul, secret giving and receiving by ways that
those dear to each other know how to use.
This fellowship gives enjoyment to each party.

FELLOWSHIP WITH GOD 21$
God is as pleased with the regard of others as are
you and I. He finds in their responsive affection
all that you or I do. Here, perhaps, is a part of
the infinite blessedness of the three persons of the
Trinity. He enjoys confidence and friendship,
is the poorer without them and the richer with
them. And for you and me there are sunshine
and warmth in this heavenly giving and taking.
In short, it is a mutual communication of good
things. The Lord's benedictions rest upon you,
his Word enters your mind, his Spirit is within.
In return you have faith, prayer, and praise.
Prayer, the " spirit of supplications," falls on you ;
and in return you " pray in the Holy Ghost. ' ' Thus
there is conscious and active intercourse — tender
and intimate interchange of love and communica
tion; everlastingly free donation ; consent to it all,
and renewed consent.
Again, this fellowship increases. Acquain
tance gives knowledge, knowledge gives affec
tion, affection gives intercourse. Take any dis
tant star into the range of a powerful telescope,
and that minute and beautiful point of light in
creases and blazes until you see, evidently, that
it is a sun. So comes upon the soul the vision
of the great King, the sense of his majesty, his
excellence, his attraction.
Finally, this fellowship exists in the life to
come. The psalmist says, " As for me, I shall

214 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
behold thy face in righteousness." The Revela-
tor says, "They shall see his face;" not see him
bodily, not see him directly ; no, not this. But in
the face the particular personality is most mani
fest. They shall contemplate God's most expres
sive works, his most characteristic, his highest
manifestations, his most expressive glory. This
is his face. Aside from this intellectual appre
hension of God there is the direct vision of Jesus.
Those in heaven, the saints, one and many, see
the Lord. Many are the greetings in that joyful
land. Paul desired to depart and be with Christ.
It is a glimpse into his very soul ; we become
aware of his insatiable longings to be with his
exalted Lord, himself exalted also ; longings to
take in and give out in various coming and going.

CHAPTER XXVI.
FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHERS.
In inquiries about the divine indwelling in its
workings we come to Christian fellowship. See
ing ourselves in God we see ourselves in one an
other. The divine intent is that the Christian
shall be with others. The Saviour's prayer was
"that they may be made perfect in one." The
divine working within naturally issues in this.
The mighty heavenly impulse comes out in ten
derness, affection, brotherhood, communication.
The divine indwelling and the love created is
sue spontaneously in Christian fellowship. Nat
urally the human heart calls for human company.
Continually persons talk with and visit one another.
There is an instinctive or acquired feeling, also,
of the helpfulness of this : that only with others
is a man most himself ; that only with them does
he do his best. Men are not only social, but
they form or they approve of society. Fellow
ship gets the benefit of the aggregate ; makes all
the parts to work for the benefit of each ; makes
215

216 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the provision made by all go to each. So a per
son gets a vastly better service than he would if
alone ; gets a better table, better clothing, better
housing, greater safety, greater comfort. Society
is a great blessing to the individual person, and
religious society is a great blessing to the reli
gious person; a great help and encouragement;
it brightens the face, cheers the heart, and helps
the soul.
As fire makes the dull coal to glow and the
black mass from the scuttle to send out light and
heat, so love ignites the soul and makes it burn.
As the fire shows its life in the way of flame,
makes burning and bright gases continually to
rise, so the fire of love. As the sun quickens,
and in the cold there is heat, and roots and seeds,
plants, shrubs, and trees do thrive, so love works.
The moment a person is converted he wants to
find other Christians, and goes to find them. He
may have been indifferent, but now he is eager.
He goes for his kith and kin ; he offers greetings
and receives congratulations ; his social disposition
becomes active.
As under the stimulus of light and heat certain
plants open their flowers in the morning, and
on the withdrawal of the stimulus close them at
night, so in the economy of nature and grace there
are stimulants to the opening of Christian hearts
to one another; influences that make Christian

FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHERS 217
social life to flourish ; powers of God, powers of
_ grace, and powers of nature.
Spiritual fellowship comes out especially in the
spiritual church; even as separate substances,
each with its own density and gravity, its own
cohesion and elasticity, are joined into one by
chemical action, so persons combine in a church.
The child wants other children. The child of
God wants other children of God. Christians go
like waters that come down from the valleys,
stream after stream, then coalesce and move on
together. The people of God become one in toils
and enterprises, in cares and trials, in defeats and
victories. They communicate to one another and
receive from one another.
Immediately the first disciples met daily with
one accord ; they became very much to one an
other. They even went so far that those who
had means divided with those who had no means.
There was a daily breaking of bread together ; the
dream of brotherhood to its uttermost, short like
a dream, but for a little while real ; a true family.
And these affectionate disciples had been persons
diverse and antagonistic to a degree ; had be
longed to opposing sets — Jews and Gentiles,
Greeks and barbarians, masters and servants;
classes hating one another, despising one another.
Now there were no more dislikes, irritations, en
mities; but instead there was a fellowship em-

2l8 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
phatic and conspicuous ; a closely cohering band ;
together in prayers and holy praises ; together in
a common confession of sin and testimony of sal
vation; together in the sacred meal in remem
brance of Christ; together in all service of their
departed and yet present Lord ; a people distinct,
defined, and closely acting; a people realizing
gloriously the communion of the saints.
I turn to the nature of this communion of the
saints. I wish I could picture gospel fellowship ;
could unfold its full meaning so that it should
take hold of us all, and we labor one by one to
create the great and blessed reality.
The planetary system symbolizes this fellow
ship. Each planet moves in its own orbit, but
along with other planets in their orbits. Each
planet swings round the sun, each satellite round
its planet; all under control, all influenced by
others, yet moving in harmony ; planet swaying
planet, satellite, satellite ; the primitive curves
losing their simplicity ; a vibration through and
through ; all weighed and placed and poised ; all
delicately adjusted, and the whole evenly bal
anced. The forest also brings its symbol. We
enter the woods ; the boughs intertwine, the roots
interlace, the tall trees are interlocked — a squirrel
can run through their tops. Now these are re
mote and inferior kinds of fellowship, they are its
distant phenomena.

FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHERS 219
But material combinations are dim and pale
presentations of what I mean. I turn to ordinary
social unions. There are companionships which
center about pursuits of pleasure or work or
study ; choice and desirable they often are, lead
ing to permanent friendships. Comrades in war
never forget each other. In such companion
ships we have illustration of the heavenly com
panionship. We see a bright home ; the days and months
go by ; there is a ceaseless living together under
the same roof, a sitting together at the same
table, unbroken common talk, a genial regard, the
bond of a common affection. This family fellow
ship is full of the significance of Christian fellow
ship. We read of " the household of faith," of
" the family of the redeemed." God's people are
vitally one.
We are a body of pilgrims going forward in a
caravan, going up, if you choose, to the holy city,
to present ourselves before the Lord ; now travel
ing and now halting, now in the daylight and now
in the dark, but ever together; all social grades,
all differences of culture, all varieties of fortune,
all ages, but one in brotherly love, one in a com
mon emotion of love and loyalty to Jehovah.
There is general public worship. One and an
other and all enter the doors; the congregation
gathered, now rises the voice of prayer and that

220 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
of praise ; a common purpose actuates and a com
mon service unites. There are outward signs and
words of a union inward, organic, sealed — sealed
by the presence of the Holy Ghost ; a sacred, an
uplifting, a heavenly fellowship. There are the
praises of the people. They are in concert, they
make a chorus ; they join in singing, whether near
or far, their blended voices rising in the great
congregation — scarcely one silent. The whole
body joins as they do who stand in glory chant
ing "Alleluia."
And now as to the character of this fellowship.
The intercourse should be natural and easy;
be as the blossoming of the apple-tree, as the
smiles of the affectionate one ; be simple talking
with God, confiding to him thoughts ; be like the
flower sending out perfume ; like singing when
one is happy, or crying when one is sad ; some
thing eminently spontaneous ; a lifting up of the
soul to God. Praying to him is vastly different
from praying to the dead, where we call and they
answer not again. It belongs to no land of
dreams, but to persons awake. It is living; is
addressed to a living, listening Being. It is as if
two were walking and talking; it is communion,
as with a friend, an ever-fresh impulse and ex
pression of affection and desire ; desire to com
municate with God, the finite with the Infinite.
There is in prayer fervor and elevation, enlarge-

FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHERS 221
ment of heart, and corresponding utterance; a
feeling that God is willing to hear and has power
to answer; a moral certainty about this Being,
that he can do no otherwise.
The fellowship is pure — pure in purpose and
practice ; obeying every law of virtue ; taking no
improper liberties; free of all foulness; never
sensual ; genuinely Christian. It is orderly, those
who enter it being modest and mannerly, keep
ing proper reserve, never overstepping decorum
and propriety. It is thoughtful and reasonable,
always sensible, never silly. It is continuous.
Beloved ones fail to fill their places, move away ;
streams and lakes and mountain-ranges intervene.
Others pass over the dark river. But God ever
gives some as our companions.
This giving and receiving has degrees, accord
ing to the development of Christian qualities.
With increase in the knowledge and grace of
Christ there is increase in intercourse with his
people. It was for this growth and perfection
that Christ prayed.
What shall I say of fellowship hereafter ? Not
only the person, but the various groups of persons
shall flourish as not here. When the continents
rose and stretched out east and west above the
ocean level, a world of new vegetable and animal
life appeared. So in the fullness of time shall
the people of Christ rise unto the heavenly world.

222 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Go to New York; witness the grandeur of the
buildings, the streets, the rivers, the sea ; witness
the multitude of the people, the vast and varied
life, the wealth, the work, the skill. There is
herein some type of the celestial city, the perfect
society. Among the most precious and most
beautiful disclosures of the Word of God is that
picture here and there, now in Isaiah, now in
Hebrews, now in Revelation, of the everlasting
and beneficent kingdom of the divine people as
a great city. John, when a convict in the mines
of Patmos for the testimony of Jesus, had strange
visions, which he wrote down. In the book of
them we read : " And I John saw the holy city,
new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her hus
band." Here is the best image the writer had.
The city was the only organic state he knew,
and which then was. But though he takes only
a city, he fills it with glory ; gives gold for its
pavements, pearls for its gates, layers of all bright
jewels for the stones of its walls. It is one, for
Christ and his redeemed are one. The very op
posite of deadness and darkness, its stones of life
and light are playing with color and shining
ceaselessly ; a fair type of the fair people and
their fair King. It is a city of the soul of every
saint. It bodies forth the heavenly society with
all its beauties, its uses and glories. It repre-

FELLOWSHIP WITH OTHERS 223
sents a people alive in themselves as never before,
and alive also with the divine life ; alight with the
glory of God. One heavenly year there shall
heal the heart of all its soreness. With the men
and women and the children of the Lord, what
the external appearances, surroundings, limits,
we know not. All, perhaps, not after earthly
fashion ; if so, then after a heavenly fashion. In
their universal and perpetual love, order and peace
shall reign. Those of them alike shall gather,
sympathetic and congenial. Thus is it there
fundamentally : union with others ; transfers of
thought and affection ; an infinite social life. No
wonder the Bible uses words of exaltation, of
glory and triumph.
So, then, in the land of the future lies a great
city continually in light, the silent gates open to
east and west, south and north; and multitudes
are within. No fraud or violence is there, but
everlasting fellowship, a brotherhood ideal and
real. " O wondrous-fair Jerusalem,
Shall I thy gates pass through,
Thy jubilations surely join,
Thy lordly splendors view?"

CHAPTER XXVII.
A LIFE OF PRAYER.
Another spiritual characteristic of him who
has the divine indwelling is prayerfulness. It is
a ruling affection, a fundamental habit, a divine
provision ; hardly natural, rather something su
pernatural. Prayers rise from believers of " every
city and country " ; from all the multitude of the
people of God, toiling or suffering, uplifted or
downcast. Our prayers run parallel with our experiences.
There are the prayers of the poor, the widowed,
the needy, the stranger; the prayers of the sick
and the afflicted. There are prayers for mercy
and succor, for healing, restoration, and aid, in
all being and ministering ; prayers for all sorts of
things. In prayer, adoration is expressed. Adoration
implies perception of the perfections of God ; im
plies the feelings of reverence and awe which
these perfections awaken ; implies, also, the ex
pression of such perception and such feelings. In
224

A LIFE OF PRAYER 225
other words, adoration is the perception that is
his who with strong imagination and acute sensi
bility views the ocean in its grandeur, or the sun
in its splendor, or a storm in its might. There is
a sense of the Infinite, and at the same time a
feeling of awe ; and, in the view of God, often a
feeling of joy — joy as in the full, warm, genial
sunlight ; joy as in beholding beauty in its high
est forms, some glorious picture or great cathe
dral; joy as in listening to some grand piece of
music. One beholds with angels and the just, and
the lowliest perceive with the highest, man with
cherubim and seraphim, the infinite God. It is
felt that in this view of God there is not only that
which is partially seen, but also that which can
not be seen ; not alone that which is immeasured,
but that which cannot be measured ; that form
and glory some of which is found and some of
which is past finding out. There is a sense of the
divine energy and majesty so great as strictly to
be inconceivable and unutterable, as surpassing the
human powers of thought, feeling, or expression.
It is on account of God being what he is, and
the soul being what it is, that adoration exists,
that " it is becoming and right, proper and due,"
for every creature of intelligence to adore God ;
for man and the spirits of the just and all holy
angels ; for every Christian soul, all fathers and
brethren, all churches and holy assemblies.

226 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
In prayer, praise is expressed. The heart rises
heavenward to the Giver ; praises him for the gifts
of creation, the gifts of provision ; and that his ears
are ever open to all the cries and all the cares.
In prayer, penitence is expressed ; sadness for
wrong done. The gloomy feeling of evil-doing is
the longing that it had not been done. This peni
tence, with some more, with others less, is ex
pressed to him we worship, and whom we deeply
love. It is a kind of natural, sad survival of dead
evils ; a kind of chain by which they still hold
to us. At last the soul reaches the Saviour and
tells the story of the wrong. He who comes to
us from on high — the living Lord — is the true
confessor of the soul.
Then, too, in prayer are petition and interces
sion. He who is in the reception of the divine
power petitions and intercedes, and acceptably ;
because he has received Christ and is in favor
with God ; because, too, he is sincere, is really
desirous, while yet submissive; because, also, he
trusts and works concerning the answer. He also
prays here with power. He is an efficient means,
a moral cause, leading God to do that which
otherwise he could not have done. He produces
measureably the results he desires, is a divinely
appointed instrumentality to do it.
There is motive to this asking, in the great
divine perfections. Take the power that upholds,

A LIFE OF PRAYER 227
and turns planet and sun on their axes. We look
at the complex and involved solar system, we see
all circling as we cannot imagine, and we say that
like an island in the ocean that system lies in
God. And so we pray. Or take the wisdom that
controls. We see atoms and molecules full of
working-powers that as trained soldiers marshall
at the word, gather and disperse, build up, and
tear down, and we say, " Behold him who is wise
in all his ways and perfect in all his works."
There is motive to this asking, in the great
divine relations. Take the divine condescension.
What if God be infinite ? If the sun chooses to
shine on the earth shall the earth object ? Vast be
yond conception, giving out light and heat beyond
measure, it shines with the rest upon the earth.
It could light and warm a million worlds. But
volume, bulk, and greatest energy do not keep the
sun from the earth or any little spot upon it. The
sun while shining elsewhere infinitely is shining
here and on every little thing. Size is no hin
drance, but is rather a help. Even so like that
sun is God. Even though infinite, he hears our
prayers. There is motive to this asking, in the great di
vine ministries where the Lord is with his own in
ministries many, both outer and inner. He makes
them to be radiant with celestial light and filled
with celestial love. He gives them that rest in

228 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
him which is for them as for one tired to sit on the
shore or bathe in the sea. Even from the .be
ginning until now is he thus especially minister
ing in the long line of the children of God, with
each one in all his varying form, his changing
self. He has revealed himself as a God to whom
each one of us may find his way. Here every
Christian, if he will dig for it, shall find his own
water. God has enough and to spare with which
to answer your true prayer, even as the sun has
heat enough and light and power enough for
long enough for every planet that rolls.
When the believer reads of these perfections
and close relations and tender dealings, the soul
naturally grows devout; the head is bent, the
heart worships. In the events, the exigencies,
of life, the man is ever drawing upon the' infinite,
the boundless, the divine. His prayer is motive-
power by which to help accomplish certain results ;
a gift of God for daily use ; one of the best of
human helps; a true power in the world of" man
and of grace. You may say that he who has the
divine indwelling ought to be so stable that he
and all his is fixed ; that he has no avoidable
danger or dejection or distress or need ; that he
is like the islands and the continents in the sea.
Instead of that he is unstable like the ocean : its
surface rising and falling, ever in agitation. He
is ever in unstable equilibrium, That is human

A LIFE OF PRAYER 229
nature, full and in want. With such a nature and
such a God and such a power, one naturally says,
and with all his soul, " Hearken unto the voice of
my cry, my King and my God : for unto thee will
I pray." He lives in prayer, works in prayer ; uses
it as a man uses his eyes or his arms. A deep
instinct impels one to call upon God ; a deep feel
ing that he is near.
Then the very Spirit moves upon one to pray.
He is so penetrated, so pervaded, he must pray ;
he prays without ceasing. In the summer's sun
the corn fairly shoots upward ; it is in its element,
it takes on stature and length of leaf, and the field
is a sea of green. As that lush, luxuriant life
pushes outward and upward and into noble form,
so pushes the Christian soul Godward. God's
people are naturally a praying people. We have
yesterday's prayers and the prayers of all the yes
terdays from the beginning. Many voices from
the past testify to this great human experience.
The St. Lawrence flows from the Great Lakes,
moves amid and through the Thousand Islands,
bears ships and steamers, and amid superb scenery
goes on to the sea. So has flowed on the prayer
of the church. The tides rise and fall, flow and
ebb ; they never cease, and will roll while the
earth rolls. So the Christian prays without ceas
ing ; so the church. She has an eternal passion of
prayer. Nature and grace both impel her. As

230 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the earth is ever putting forth the grass, the herb,
the tree, so the Christian is ever praying. It is
an appointed movement that goes on in one, in
all. The great history of spiritual life is in part
a history of prayer ; from Abraham to the apos
tles, from the beginning to the end of spiritual
world-history. Then with the divine indwelling you cannot
but enter into the divine purposes, come under
the divine impulses, and long and pray for God
to exercise his great creative, his great remedial
forces. The order is God's mind and intent,
then the believer's mind and intent; God and
he fit together, as when the great wheel goes
the little wheel goes. He out from whom came
the very earth itself, from him comes prayer.
His thoughts come out in the human thoughts,
his desires in the human desires. He moves upon
the praying soul, that it should pray for this or
that. The desire of God develops itself in the
prayer ; the desire for a particular thing to take
place. As the plant is nourished by the earth
and the air, grows, puts forth new branches, and
accomplishes its end, so praying is nourished of
God. Here we have the effectual, the inwrought
prayer of the righteous man. Ever is the Spirit
making intercession in and through the saints.
Moreover, " God who worketh in us " helps
prayer ; is ever teaching the matter and helping in

A LIFE OF PRAYER 23 1
the manner of prayer ; ever giving faith and desire
and help in expression, both to those who can ex
press themselves and to those whose feelings will
not articulate themselves, whose thoughts will not
arrange themselves. " The Spirit also helpeth
our infirmities, for we know not what we should
pray for as we ought." We have his ordinary
and sometimes his extraordinary assistance. He
enables us to be timely, to know every day what
to pray for. He helps us be appropriate ; to
perceive command or promise, example or other
warrant. Further, God enables us to trust him as to the
time of answering. Prayer is sometimes like a
buried seed, not to come up until after certain
days — a shorter period with some seeds, a longer
with others. So in our prayers we are to remem
ber that very much is going on ; that a great com
plication exists ; a system with many wheels, many
powers; there may have to be waiting. Of the
saints of old who prayed for the Messiah's com
ing it is said, " These all died in faith, not hav
ing received the promises." You must feel that
God is attentive, but may be impeded. Said the
angel to the prophet : " The vision is yet for an
appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and
not lie : though it tarry, wait for it." The pray
ing way is a good way, a living way, a way of
power, but not necessarily a quick way.

232 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
God also enables us to trust him as to the way
of answering. Often a thing we desire to have
done in the church or in the land is done, but
not in the way we expected. The disciples at
Jerusalem prayed for the church's extension and
were answered by a persecution.
Go then in the ministration of the Spirit, in
" the anointing that abideth," we have, in the
actual work for us of our Redeemer, the spirit of
prayer. In all the stretch and strain of life, the
doing and enduring, we have this great privilege
and possession.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
A LIFE OF PRAISE.
The Comforter who comes into his own, so
fills them with his actual presence as to produce
in them a constant spirit of praise; a spirit elo
quent of God, his love and presence; a spirit of
reverence and gratitude for his goodness and
mercy, of admiration and adoration for his great
ness and glory. For he is the secret of that
strength and skill by which all food is raised, all
clothing wrought, all houses are builded. He is
as strong in man and for him as ever ; for sup
ply, for preservation and defense. Nor will they
who are partakers of the Spirit forget the trea
sures not of earth, " spiritual blessings in heavenly
places;" the life and light, guidance and liberty,
the fellowship with others and with God,- the joy
of work, the awe of worship, and all the power of
the ordinances. While we walk in the light of
the sun we are walking in the light of God's coun
tenance ; in the light of him that fills the outdoor
world and that world which is within. We strew
233

234 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
flowers before our Lord as our welcome in the
glory of his coming, and, even as we welcome,
his gracious Spirit comes forth in truth and
largeness and helpfulness. When once comes the
vision of our dependence and our receiving, and
from whom, it touches us and serves us ; this giv
ing in its richness and tenderness, so full and free ;
an ocean fullness of width and depth, a strength
and an abiding like that of the everlasting moun
tains. As some great stream rolls through the
desert and makes one long oasis, so through
days and years and ages has flowed the stream
of divine love ; all along the banks has existed a
land fertile and beautiful and full of life. As we
see we sing " Halleluiah! "
The spirit of praise is thus a habit, a phase of
character, a tendency rather than an effort of
will. It breathes through the whole soul, touches
every thought, and tempers every emotion. One
lives in it. The soul goes out in psalms and
hymns of religion as did that of Asaph and that
of David ; and in this is a steady inspiration to
love and to act divinely well.
He who dwells continually in us, the Divine
Spirit, he is the primary cause of praise ; he is the
secret energy that gives the soul to be alive with
heavenly views and feelings, the whole heart to
be cheered and stirred and bursting out in praises,
as do the birds in song. He who is ever with his

A LIFE OF PRAISE 2$$
own has in his grace and presence given from the
clear heaven of gladness this soul to see and sing.
Yes, only in the fire sent down from above do our
hearts arise in rapture and acclaim.
The secondary cause of this divine life is the
heart. In the creeds and theologies we have the
thoughts of the church, but in the hymns and the
praises we have her heart ; her temper and her
tenderness, her love and her loyalty, her sweetest
affections and noblest aspirations. Praise comes
out of the common and the rarer experiences ; it
strikes all the tender and all the triumphant
chords. It comes out of the faith- element, the
hope-element, the love-element. It is love's
message to the skies ; the descending gift is re
turned in ascending praise. Even as God made
the universe because of his heart rather than of
his thought, so the Christian makes his world of
praise from his heart. In his everlasting health
and strength he feels like singing.
Praise expresses itself in music: no language
so varied and subtle, so fitted for feeling, so
spiritual. Only that language of tones can truly
speak the glorious and wonderful feelings born
of God. The Giver of all gifts gave music to be
most from faith and holy love and hope, and all
the experiences of the soul in God. As the bud
bursts into the sudden beauty of the flower, so
the heart breaks into the praise of God's eternal

236 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
song. The glow of feeling is followed by the
glory of sound. Moved in the vision, the heart
breaks out in the sweetest songs and hallowed
psalms. It was so with Miriam and Israel ; so
with Deborah and Israel; so with David and
Israel when the ark came to Jerusalem ; so with
Solomon and Israel when the temple was ded
icated. It was so with the multitude that broke
out into the hosannas before our Lord in his
coming to Jerusalem. When Nature would ex
press her feelings to her Maker the birds awake
one after another, and, opening their little throats,
fill the world with song. So when God's people
would express especially their awe and admira
tion and gratitude, they sing. It expresses a
certain exalted form of Christian feeling; is the
peculiar and perfect glory of worship ; is as flower
is to stalk — its perfectness ; is the spirit of worship
at its height. They in the temple hearkened and
called, back and forth, in song and response. The
free heart in monastery and convent, in conven
ticle and cathedral, has ever thus ascended. And
in the fellowship of their glory is every church
to-day. Praise in its character is first an infinite lan
guage ; it is the soul's communion with the Eter
nal Spirit. He whom we magnify is infinite in glory,
in majesty, and blessedness, and in praise our vi
sion and joy of him are infinite — it is the joy of the

A LIFE OF PRAISE 237
full, warm, and genial sunlight. One bursts all
bonds of expression, frees himself from all limita
tion of words or phrases, and finds incomplete the
highest forms in painting or sculpture or any art
save music. Into this with all its spirit and fervor
he throws himself; it is the main path by which
his spirit has immediate and direct access to the
Divine Spirit, the directed and most universal way.
So is it when one is full of hope, of love, of en
thusiasm, of the idea of duty. So is it when one
beholds and loves with angels and the just, and
the lowliest receive with the highest, man with
cherubim and seraphim, the infinite God. But
praise is infinite because the imagination which
helps it is infinite, and images not alone that which
is only partially seen, but also that which cannot
be seen ; not alone that which is immeasured, but
that which cannot be measured ; that form and
glory some of which is found and some of which
is past finding out.
Praise is enduring; is deep, steady, and per
petual ; is part of the eternal life. One shall have
done with care, with pain, with prayer, but never
with praise. One shall have done with penitence
and with patience, done with watching and with
worrying, but never with glorifying.
" Our days of praise shall ne'er be past,
While life and thought and being last,
And immortality endures."

238 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Praise is of use. In a world of disappointment
it purifies the feelings and changes them into
heavenly sympathies ; it makes to ring the joy-
bells, and the silver trumpets to blow. It creates
soothing as in Saul, chases away trouble, lifts the
heart out of itself and to God. It creates inspira
tion as with Elisha, and makes one happy and free
as a bird. The angel takes us out of prison as
Peter of old, and leads us, if we will, into the
city. We are glad and need expression, and so
we praise ; or we are sad and need solace, and
so we praise. Many a struggling Christian has
sung himself into cheer; many a Christian sol
dier, at the sound of the singing, has sprung up
from the earth with the light of heaven in his
face ; many a weakening band has started up in
goodly struggle to a greater effort, a better utter
ance ; to a courage and a hope other than before.
If we abide in this heavenly spirit, this blessed
habit and exercise, it shall draw us toward truth
and beauty and goodness. Many are its refining
and elevating ministries ; in many a way is the
spirit of praise a spirit of grace ; in many a way
an herb of healing for the sickness of this world's
sin. Like a wind from heaven the spirit comes,
and it refreshes us.
We come now to those who praise. In the
reception of this heavenly spirit, in the power of
its manifestation, very nature is called on to praise,

A LIFE OF PRAISE 239
as praise God it does. All this everlasting mak
ing of things shows forth his power and wisdom
and goodness. Field, wood, and roadside, all the
beauties of earth and all the splendors of heaven,
praise him. Psalm and song call upon sun, moon,
and stars to praise him : " Praise the Lord from
the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps : fire, and
hail ; snow, and vapor ; stormy wind fulfilling his
word." Then, too, man's works are called upon to
praise ; praise God they do : ores of the mine ;
products of every soil ; the merchandise coming
along all our ways and filling all our homes — all
do magnify him.
Then to the soul illumined and transformed, the
very means of grace seem to praise, as in a way
they do. The Lord's day praises, in joyful speech
of resurrection life. Said an old church father:
" On this day we meet, and in praise we are full of
the resurrection ; full of the good tidings of great
joy to all people. We are jubilant because of the
universal jubilee." It is the hush of the twilight
morn of the resurrection day. The Lord's Sup
per praises ; it celebrates a mighty passion, but is
itself an everlasting festival, a thanksgiving, a
eucharist, creating a grateful sense of grace re
ceived. All the communion of the saints here
magnifies the Lord.
Then, also, those in the divine image directly

24O THE DIVINE INDWELLING
praise. Innocent men in Eden within the garden
gates, and the whole world a wilderness without,
must have had heart and happiness in the sweet
work of praise. But they who bear the seal of
the King in the full possession of the Spirit do
directly praise. Redeemed man, with favors many
and endless, exclaims with David, " I will bless the
Lord at all times : his praise shall continually be
in my mouth."
God must have an exceeding appreciation of
praise, he has so filled heaven with its spirit.
There is the praise of angels — jubilant in song,
as they minister to nature, to man, and to God.
In the vision of the beginning we are told that
when God laid the foundations " the morning
stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy." In the vision of Isaiah they
sing, those cherubim and seraphim, part over
against part. In the vision of the nativity we are
told of " a multitude of the heavenly host praising
God." In the vision of the future they sing, the
angels and the just. Those beyond hard life,
beyond the stain of sin, the deceit of Satan, the
winds and waves of trouble, and in eternal glory,
" Let them praise the name of the Lord." Those
countless persons do with love and thankfulness
join the angel choirs, and all unite in the new
song. They do each in his own inheritance, and
all together in supreme majesty, praise God.

A LIFE OF PRAISE 24 1
John saw and heard. There was the voice of
the multitude of the people, and of the great
thunders rolling and rising — a universal an
them : " Halleluiah : for the Lord God omnipo
tent reigneth."
Thus passing in praise through the scenes of
earth, we shall at last reach to sing
" That undisturbed song of pure content
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne
To him that sits thereon,
With saintly shout and solemn jubilee,
Where the bright seraphim, in burning row
Their loud uplifted trumpets blow ;
And the cherubic host, in thousand choirs,
Touch their immortal harps of golden wires ;
With those just spirits that wear victorious palms,
Hymns devout and holy psalms,
Singing everlastingly."

CHAPTER XXIX.
CHRISTIAN COURAGE.
The timid person shrinks and clings and waits ;
he has no spirit. But fear should at once and
forever be banished from every Christian heart;
for fear magnifies difficulties; it does not take
sufficient account of helps ; it makes visionary
obstacles ; it tends to failure.
Courage is the taking a clear, decisive, marked
stand; is the resolute facing of difficulties; is
the facing people, their thoughts, their remarks,
their prejudices, their opposing interests, their
reproaches, their false accusations, their persecu
tion. Courage is the determination to face the
evil in person, church, or party or community;
to face the weakness, the difficulty, the distress,
the evil state or circumstance of the case. It is
the opposite of distrust and hesitancy and misgiv
ing. And, indeed, the difficulties are in part the
making of us in calling out our graces. Fancy
the mountains leveled, the hills no more; not a
242

CHRISTIAN COURAGE 243
rise, not a declivity, not a dashing stream, but an
everlasting plain with its narrow outlook.
Courage has no necessary connection with
vehemence or with rudeness; it is far from be
ing harsh or being censorious. One feels for
persons as well as for the truth and the cause,
hence one spares as much as possible those whom
he opposes. Paul's boldness in rebuking the
Galatian and Corinthian Christians was accom
panied with tenderness. He said, " Am I then
become your enemy, because I tell you the
truth?" Courage is natural to the gracious person. It
is of the nature of an energy to make itself mani
fest. As heat or light or gravity asserts itself, so
it is of the nature of a good man to assert him
self; not to hesitate in accomplishing that for
which he lives. So to speak, the magnetic needle
has the courage of its properties; so the Chris
tian has the courage of his convictions. The
thunder-cloud moves with its flashes and explo
sions ; the stream moves in its currents, rapid or
slow ; so in accordance with his own nature moves
the Christian boldly on. The flower ever exhales,
ever sends its pollen-grains out upon the wind;
so the Christian is ever active. It is only when
he has little vigor that he has little courage ; little
force to stand or work or war, that he has little
courage.

244 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
When you learn that plants and trees take in
their moisture at their roots, then pump it up
through many wells, raising it in the tall tree to
the very top, you have an idea of forces at work
to do this thing. So there are forces that support
a man's courage; that raise it higher; that carry
it as far as needed.
The graces within the Christian tend to make
him bold. Faith gives him boldness. Certain
blessed spiritual facts are perceived with a clear
ness, with an evidence of their reality, and to an
extent that revives us. They are appreciated and
appropriated. When our eyes open as did those
of the prophet's servant, and we see the chariots
of God ranged around us, we take heart. Seeing
the divine mind and will in certain persons or
places, gathering thus what God can and may do
where you are, you face your own work with
more spirit. Sometimes in a spell of dry dead
heat there comes a motion in the grass of the
meadows and the grain of the field. The wind
has risen and blows ; the spirits revive, and in the
waving of the trees the courage returns. Men are
no more morally fearful, afraid of work. All this
floats off like wreckage from a plunging, rising,
advancing ship. So a revival of religion else
where that you witness gives you more hope,
more courage, in your own field.
The general act of trust, of self-surrender to

CHRISTIAN COURAGE 245
God in what you are and along with what you
undertake, inspires you ; the giving up of pride,
temper, ambition, and the putting yourself en
tirely at the divine disposal. In this general
trusting you go forward boldly to do that which
is set before you to do. A bright light shines
upon you — the light of guidance. Feeling that
God will fulfil his promises, you go on according
to your call, much as the clouds go sailing the
blue sky, or the stream goes rushing through the
rocky gorge, or the crickets chirp, or the birds sing.
Said Paul : " We having the same spirit of
faith, according as it is written, I believed, and
therefore have I spoken." The Apostle John
rings out : " This is the victory that overcometh
the world, even our faith." It gives the cheer,
the patience, the perseverance, the energy to
continue the conflict. It is said of the saints in
glory, they overcame by the blood of the Lamb.
" He that believeth " can face and fight " the
wicked one " whenever or in whatever guise he
comes. Faith gave Noah the courage to build
his ark in the face of a gainsaying world; gave
Abraham the courage to leave the city for the
wilderness in the face of a criticizing community.
In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews see what faith
has done for courage. See what it did for Moses
and Joshua, for Gideon and Barak, for David also,
and for the prophets,

246 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
Another grace needed is love. Out of love the
shrinking woman, the timid mother, has courage.
Out of love Christ's people have died for him.
The heart that is light with love is brave to face
all foes. Fervid, glowing, enthusiastic Christians,
in their love for the cause and the people, are apt
to be very bold in their speaking and undertak
ing. Paul was very bold in his great tenderness
toward his countrymen, evil-minded and inimical
as they were, furious devotees, revengeful, and
hunting him as they did.
Another grace needed is hope. Expect to ac
complish something and you attempt it. Hope
tends to assurance, to action. Look with Joshua
of old for coming conquests and become bold
yourself for enterprises. It is as in the spring:
we look upon the starting grass, the swelling
buds, the early flowers, the sunny fields. We
feel that the flowers of all the woods and meadows
are rising in their season ; that the leaves of all
the trees are coming out. We behold the whole
world's new life; we catch on; we become ani
mated, active, bold.
Another source of courage is the joy of the
Lord. When one reaches this stage he will de
clare his testimony and go upon his service. The
spirit of halleluiah has nothing for its equal to
drive away bugbears and all other objects of fear ;
to give confidence in your cause and contempt of

CHRISTIAN COURAGE 247
your enemies. Nothing shall deter you. Joy has
a wonderful power to remove nervousness and
fearfulness. Again, a part of the conditioning of courage is
in those about us — courageous companions. Con
tact with nature is to some restful and helpful;
contact with others is to some restful and help
ful. We get rid of depression and unfriendliness.
One's own experience is good, but that of two is
better, and that of a larger number is better still.
It does us good ; it revives us. The counsel, the
sympathy, the testimony, the manifestation of the
Holy Ghost, are inspiring. You depend some
what on the sympathy of others, upon compa
nionship ; you want others with you. If a soldier's
company refuse to advance he will be apt to re
fuse. If others refuse to prosecute a work — get
discouraged — you get discouraged. The planets
of heaven, as they rush forward in their appointed
ways, seem to need one another to speed, to bal
ance, to retard them in their wheeling. So in
grace the action of those around one is especially
influential. He is somewhat as others are. If
the tide is low he is low ; if high he is high. He
has courage to undertake things if he have men
of courage about him, ready to go in with him.
But I turn to the divine source of Christian
courage. If we receive the Holy Spirit, if we
have the inbreathing of God, can we be other than

248 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
men of courage ? This boldness is not merely a
matter of natural positiveness or force or fearless
ness, or a matter of authority in parent, teacher,
or preacher ; it is in much the coming of the Son
of God. When you see it, God is nigh. Even
the apostles forsook Christ at his arrest, but they
confessed him after their baptism. Boldness is a
characteristic of him who has been with Jesus.
So the Jewish sanhedrim once testified.
You cannot make a train of cars traverse from
one direction across the landscape to the opposite
direction — buildings, trees, the very ground itself
left behind — without steam; you cannot, what
ever your machinery or however good your road
bed. The living, personal God in the depths of
the soul is ever effectually working the power to
face and bear up against the evil that might be
feared. Like the sun that gives heat to the earth
and warms up every form of matter, and nobody
can keep cold under its rays, so God kindles fire
within the heart. The clouds need the wind or
they will not go. They need the moisture or
they will not form ; need air and water, or the
clouds will not grow and join and draw out in
lines or roll up in piles or descend in showers.
You cannot whirl the earth in its awful circle
through space without gravitation ; so you can
not have courage without the divine indwelling.
The church at Jerusalem prayed, saying, " Grant

CHRISTIAN COURAGE 249
unto thy servants', that with all boldness they may
speak thy Word." Let God give the boldness;
let it come at his bidding, from his impulse. Even
the sun sends forth its light and heat at his bid
ding and from his impulse. Let God have you
in his direct, positive control, and he will endow
you with courage. He puts himself forth through
us ; gives us to see that which gives us courage ;
gives us that entire self-abandonment which con
duces to courage. He animates us with his own
views, his own principles, his own feelings. He
who is as strong as frost or fire is our strength.
We are backed by his everlasting force.
" Striving," said Paul, " according to his work
ing, which worketh in me mightily." One mark
of him the living God, who gives us of his life,
is that he gives us courage in action, fortitude
in passion ; is that he puts new spirit into us.
We face with more heart our dull and mechanical
routine with all its weary round. We face with
more nerve our infirmities and indiscretions, our
difficulties and misfortunes. God is inspiring,
suggesting. With means and without means he
works, that his life flows in our veins, that Christ
be bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, and
that we be " filled with all the fullness of God."
We are uplifted and have courage, fortitude.
The flowers are found in the woods, the leaves
have come out, the birds are singing in the trees,

250 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
and all is life. No wonder we have spirit. As
God is in nature personally, powerfully, con
structing and preserving, so he is with us and
about us and in all that concerns us. There
need be no cowardice.
We now find how to get a person out of cow
ardice. Take him to the Lord, to enlist him, to
engage him ; to call out his faith, his love. So
shall he receive manhood. The appropriation and
assimilation of Christ must lead out of cowardice.
Christ central and fundamental in you must give
courage. Now all the windows are open toward
the east and the morning sun shines in. The heart
moves like a river, and the feelings chase one
another like the waves of the sea. Or, what is
the same thing, take the cowardly one to the
Bible. As the apple-tree receives through its
roots from the earth and through its leaves from
the air that which, turned to juice, feeds trunk
and branch, leaf and fruit, so the soul receives
from the Word of God that which gives bottom
and pluck. The Word enters and becomes nerve
and blood and fiber. The motives to courage, its
powers, are strengthened. Here again is it true,
" Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God."
Out of the unseen universe there may come
everything" to make us brave. God can move

CHRISTIAN COURAGE 25 I
the various energies of man, the various energies
of grace, to make us brave. Christ can break
the chains of fear whoever are our foes. He in
whom his perfect work is done will be strong and
of good courage. When one is actuated by the
Spirit, is under his moving power, that one has
resolution not to go back and has courage to go
forward. Indeed, he has an. inherent force, an
energy of motion, a directness of aim, something
like that of the rifle-ball. How Nathan faced
David ; Amos faced Jeroboam ; the nameless
prophet faced the king beside the altar of Bethel ;
Elijah braved Ahab ; Zachariah braved King
Joash; Jeremiah braved the princes of Judah!
A prophet ever rose up with a heart equal to
the crisis ; courage to rebuke sin, courage to call
for righteousness, courage to lift up a standard.

CHAPTER XXX.
CHRISTIAN UTTERANCE.
CHRIST was sent and his people are sent;
Christ communicated and his people communi
cate ; Christ was a prophet and every disciple is
a prophet ; he could interpret to others and his
followers can. His people are a manifesting
people ; they unfold spiritual things. That new
people who at Pentecost were baptized must bear
witness ; and they did, in psalms and prophecies
and tongues. Christian witnessing holds a prom
inent place in redeeming work. They who are
God's children and partakers of the Holy Ghost
generally receive of the power to speak.
The psalmists make mention of utterances and
testimonies and oracles and speeches. The writers
of the New Testament speak of revelations of
God. Paul desires prayer that utterance may be
given him, that he may speak boldly. John in
his Gospel, his Epistles, his Book of Revelation,
makes much of a fact he got from his Lord, and
that fact is witnessing : a very manifest fact in
252

CHRISTIAN UTTERANCE 253
the history of the Christian religion ; a very mani
fest element of Christian life — witnessing for God.
John but spoke for the whole body of the early
disciples when he said, " We speak that we do
know, and testify that we have seen." We read
that " the morning stars sang together, and all
the sons of God shouted for joy." The swing
ing, lighted stars in their splendor are singing of
their Creator. The sons of God are not silent,
but speaking. The Bible says, " The city was
pure gold, like unto clear glass;" something
shining, something manifest. The church may
be here symbolized as revealing, making to shine
forth, its great truths.
You expect a flower-bed to have flowers ; plenty
of them, and pretty flowers, too ; and as the sea
son goes by you expect other flowers. All
through the summer shall flowers bloom there in
their golden colors, stand still in the sun or dance
in the wind. So the spiritual person is ever ex
pressing Christ, and with the rest by his words.
He is like a piano, the business of which is to
vibrate in its stretched strings and ever to give
out music of some kind, whoever strikes it ; ever
sounding on soft and beautiful. Shall a man be
saved and not tell of it? He who feels himself
redeemed is earnest to make his Redeemer known.
His life, springing from God, fed by nature and
grace, flows out in speech. The singer must

254 ™E DIVINE INDWELLING
sing, the painter paint. The believer speaks, in
his way, with his gift ; speaks of his new thought
and feeling ; he enters on an evangel, a preaching
of the gospel.
The ointment in a man's right hand will bewray
itself. There are things to express of Christ able
to save, strong and full and fit ; of Christ who
was once upon earth and is now in heaven; the
feeling of him as the way* the truth, and the life ;
the reaching somewhat to his merits and value,
to his meaning and measure for us. He, the
brilliant star of the merely natural mind, has be
come the very sun of the spiritual mind. One
wills to be heard ; he is not going to sit by in si
lence; he speaks out. Eager, stirred by the
Holy Ghost, he must break forth and proclaim
aloud the living truths and feelings which move
him. Then his experience of religion finds ut
terance ; it is human nature for him who is happy
to look about for some one to talk to. Said a
singer : " Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and
I will declare what he hath done for my soul."
Paul was wont to testify what great things the
Lord had done for him. Who could think of John
as not speaking out ? The mountains wait through
the night until their summits are tipped with gold,
but believers show the light evermore.
God has unloosened the tongue of the real Chris
tian ; has widened his speaking- range ; has made

CHRISTIAN UTTERANCE 255
him burn to tell the simple story of the quench
less love of God. Faith, hope, love, fervor, find
utterance. Shall not the grass show its green
and the flower its beauty? Shall not the little
birds sing in the coming of the day? In con
genial conditions shall the seed burst and put
forth : the root downward to darkness and mois
ture and firm earth, the shoot upward to air and
sunlight ; that which was hidden shall come forth.
So shall not the Christian speak, and ever speak,
the truth he clearly sees?
As the subterranean waters are continually
coming to the surface by springs large and small,
coming up everywhere as we sink wells, so the
Christian is ever rising into gratulations and re
joicings. He exclaims, " Bless the Lord, O my
soul : and all that is within me, bless his holy
name." As along the way one goes whistling,
so on his bright path the Christian goes with the
speech of prayer and the speech of praise ; his
soul elate. With full heart and expanded spirit
he ranges upward more and more. He speaks
the glories of his sight and soul in praise until,
attuned to the heavenly choir, he sings among
the saved.
The whole latter half of the Bible is full of the
history of speaking and preaching. The old
prophets were nothing if not speakers. Elijah
thought Baal-worship wrong, and he denounced

256 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
it. Jeremiah felt for the oppressed man-servant
and maid-servant, and he spoke out against their
oppressors. Amos heard of some who sold the
righteous for silver and the needy for a pair of
shoes, also of others who combined to force up
the price of food and fuel ; and he spoke right
out. But the great idea seems to be the procla
mation of the presence of the Lord, the good
news of the Promised One ; the great calling vir
tually is, " Believe the gospel." The prophets
foretold the gospel ; John the Baptist announced
it ; Jesus proclaimed it ; the apostles carried it.
Christ said, " Since the days of the Baptist the
kingdom of heaven is preached." The church,
woman or man, timid or bold, in realizing Christ's
presence, not only shines it out in the face, but
in discreet and wise ways speaks it out by the
tongue. The church shall never change in this,
that she is a preaching church. She loves to
make her Saviour known. As when the prophet
stood up to proclaim repentance unto Israel and
forgiveness of sins, to bring good tidings ; as
when " in those days came John the Baptist,
preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and say
ing, Repent ye : for the kingdom of heaven is
at hand." Yet while certain services are per
formed better by certain persons, still all minis
try is to be abandoned by none ; the early de
mocracy of the church is to be remembered.

CHRISTIAN UTTERANCE 257
All of the Lord's people are prophets. As he
manifested himself in speech, so is his disciple to
do, as this or that interpretation is seen, this or
that fact is realized, this or that application is
suggested. Look at Christ the faithful witness ; testify to
what he knew : " I have declared thy name unto
my brethren;" testify in life, in character, in
gentleness and pity, in yearning and prayer, in
drawing men to God. How Christ affirmed, told
his story ! He was " the true and faithful wit
ness." In his witnessing he lived, for his wit
nessing he died, and as a witness he rose again
from the dead. It was as he told Pilate, Jesus
came to bear witness to the truth. All lamps,
all stars of night, the sun itself, and those appear
ances of old, are eclipsed by him who is the
brightness of the Father's glory and the express
image of his person. Most impressive is he in
his character, his teachings, his works.
It is characteristic of this utterance that it is
accompanied by the graces and helps of the
Spirit ; accompanied by love, patience, and quiet
ness of manner. That infilling which moves one to
speak is attended by liberty in speaking and yet
by a wisdom which directs how to speak. The
speaker is not guilty of impertinence or of
importunity. He adapts himself to time and
place. Out of a living soul he speaks those

258 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
thoughts and feelings which God approves; he
speaks with understanding. He must know the
Book, and know experience, and know the meth
ods, all to be competent. We are in a world
where even to do Christ's work we need know
ledge and skill. The very bird has to learn
to fly; the very quick- running children that so
chase about in the school-yard had each to learn
to walk. It is very important to know how to
preach Christ properly. Such speech will reach
the spiritual mind and touch the heart. It will
have something — perhaps you cannot tell what
— something which will make it effective. It
sensibly brings the Lord's presence. Let a live
Christian, one truly taught and guided of God,
speak to you, and the Holy Ghost will there be
teaching you, helping you, with power. As the
disciples going to Emmaus talked of Jesus, he
himself drew near and joined himself to them.
As they had been communicating to each other,
he began communicating to them. Often as
thus his disciples have talked has he joined
them.

CHAPTER XXXI.
CHRISTIAN SERVICE.
We come now to that genuine activity called
service : the ministry of the gospel ; to bring back
the wanderer, to interest the indifferent, to pro
claim by word and act to the lost the Saviour
found. You set fire to the brush-heap on cleared
land, and presently the whole is wrapped in
flames; the kindlings, the chips, the dry brush,
the sticks, the stumps — the whole becomes a
glowing mass, crackling and roaring with a rising
column of flame. Here is a vision of consecra
tion. Like this is the Christian service of some.
Christian life is not inactive, merely receptive,
like that of those shell- fish which adhere to rocks
or shells, and never move, but simply receive.
Christians are workers. As the natural sun rises
to light and warm the earth and wake the whole
to life, so the Sun of righteousness arises upon the
Christian and awakens him to work. Filled with
the divine indwelling, he becomes like the diamond
in its light and the ruby in its flame ; he becomes
259

260 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
like the cherubim and the seraphim, the shining
ones and the loving ones. He is always and
everywhere standing and doing for Christ's name
and cause. He is like a star alight from its point
of rising, passing upward to its meridian, and then
sweeping downward to its setting. The subjects
of grace are preachers of grace. Learners of
Christ are teachers of Christ. The Christian
worker desires and designs ; he dares and does ;
he is eminently aggressive. He would work
with Christ to destroy the works of the devil.
He would face and fight evil everywhere and
every time. He has a very chivalry and con
secration of service. He cannot sit while others
sin or suffer. He is not like the frozen stream,
but like the running stream. He is not numb
with sitting, or slow with sullenness, or gloomy
with exhaustion, or paralyzed with fear. He is
active against bad habits and customs, evil prac
tices in trade, in politics. He serves in preven
tive and restrictive work, in reformatory and con
structive work.
He who has that glorious manifestation, the
Spirit's actual presence, has an anointing for work.
In the Old Testament times priests and kings were
anointed with oil, as a symbol that the Holy
Spirit commissioned and fitted them for distinct
and special services. So John says to certain
Christians, " Ye have an unction from the Holy

CHRISTIAN SERVICE 26 1
One;" and Jesus said to his disciples, "As my
Father hath sent me, even so send I you." The
fishes are called to swim, and have fins ; the birds
are called to fly, and have wings. He who has
provided abundantly, by structure and surround
ing, for fishes and birds has provided for Christian
workers. As in nature the higher we ascend in
life the more numerous and distinctly differ
entiated are the organs, so is it as in Christian
life we rise to Christian influence and work. All
nature is at command, all innocent human nature.
All things are used for the Lord without preju
dice against any as worldly or vicious or heathen.
Christian workers may use all that they are or
have ; all that can attract the eye, charm the ear,
or please the heart ; all beauty, all music, all
friendly companionship. Singers may sing, talk
ers talk, business men do business, social people
be sociable.
He who has this mark of the living God, this
impress, performs skilful service. He tends to
be free from influences which impair the judg
ment, which give one to look through a colored
glass, which disturb and impede justice, honor, and
generosity. Then, too, he has spiritual impulses
and directions. The bird of passage goes straight
through the trackless air a thousand miles, not
moved by sight or by hearing, flying in the si
lence on high straight over hills and mountains

262 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
and extended plains, to the very tree of last year's
nest. So the Christian worker has instincts and
guidance ; is guided of Him who often guides the
free spirits of his creatures. In a sense and at
times all the Lord's people are commissioned
prophets. They are told what to do and bidden
do it, and in the doing receive oversight and
counsel. He who has this superhuman quickening is
powerful. The divine power creates human
power. When God wanted to make certain rocks
he set fire at work, and certain other rocks he set
water at work. When he wanted to make gold
and silver he veined and charged the ledges with
the vapors of gold and silver. When he wanted
to shape and smooth the earth and spread it with
soil, he set the water and the ice at work. So
when in the world he wants a work done, he
chooses agencies sufficiently powerful to do it.
What is power? Witness destructive power.
On the sea-shore the winds toss the sands inland
and turn fertile farms into barren wastes. There
is all the war of sea and coast, the fury of attack,
the stubbornness of resistance. Witness benef
icent power. See the great irrigating ditches of
the West, that connect with some dam among the
hills and bring life to a land which had neither
grass nor flower nor fruit-tree, nor song of bird
nor voice of man. All this is power. In the

CHRISTIAN SERVICE 263
Christian every element of character is a power.
Affection is of the royal manner, the manner to
compel homage. The giving of self with all the
heart touches another, is practical power. Joy is
power — drawing, winning power. " For the joy
of the Lord is your strength." Christians are
witnesses, revelators, Bibles, stars in the Lord's
right hand — stars that never burn out or are ex
tinguished. They cannot hide themselves if they
would ; they would not if they could. Peter said
to believers, " Ye also, as lively stones, are built
up a spiritual house." Ye are not dull, dim,
opaque, like ordinary stones, but ye are living
stones. Impressed ourselves, we ought to be
able to impress others. Light-receivers are light-
givers. Heat creates heat.
By all sorts of ways does the power go out.
Seeds are carried by wind or by running water;
by animals, by ships, or by wagons ; or they fly
over the country with their own sort of wings.
Our thoughts go out by speech, now serious and
now sportive ; by our singing, our praying ; by
our very manner. Sometimes persons seem to
be specially fitted. The right work needs to be
done and in the right way. Sometimes a Chris
tian worker without more grace than common,
without more general gift than common, has
greater power than common, greater flow of
thought, feeling, and words, or at least produces

264 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
a greater effect ; for instance, reaches men's heads
and hearts much better than common. There is
a moving like that of the angel who stirred the
waters. He who has this great stretch and rise of being
is powerful because he can draw upon Christ;
upon him whose power, unwasted, full, and fresh,
comes to us through Bible and sanctuary, through
sermon and song and prayer, making us powers
of the world to come, powers of the Holy Ghost,
powers to save, sanctify, and comfort. Can the
plant draw upon earth, air, and water, and
the Christian not draw upon Christ and be spe
cially aided, guided, and guarded? As we use
wind or water, electricity or steam, so may we
use the power of God. A city utilizes a lake
back among the hills, constructs waterworks, and
has the water fully at command. So is it with
the Christian worker. Moses was enabled of
God to deliver Israel, Joshua to conquer the
Promised Land ; the judges were enabled to de
liver it. In like manner, psalmists and prophets
were endowed. God said to Moses, " I will be
with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt
say." Isaiah said, "The Lord God hath given
me the tongue of the learned, that I should know
how to speak a word in season to him that is
weary." God said to Jeremiah, " Behold, I have
put my words in thy mouth." God said to his

CHRISTIAN SERVICE 265
ancient people, " Ye are my witnesses." Certain
in the New Testament spake as. the Spirit gave
them utterance. Paul " spoke the words which
the Holy Ghost gave." Peter and the other apos
tles "preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost."
Jesus said, " The Father that dwelleth in me, he
doeth the works." And in turn Jesus qualified
the seventy and the apostles. In the work of
Peter and Stephen, of Philip and Paul, we have the
evidence of a ministry of power. Peter preached
to the conversion of five thousand. Paul prayed
that the power of Christ might rest upon him.
The disciples " preached the gospel with the Holy
Ghost sent down from heaven."
This inspired service is especially a happy ser
vice ; is free of bondage ; is not a trial, a mere
matter of duty, a heavy burden, a kind of slavery,
something done without love. Nor is it so accom
panied with a sense of care, of responsibility, as to
be a weariness. You doubt your fitness ; you are
troubled about your success. You fear the tool
the Lord is using will break ; you feel your weak
ness. Nor is it so accompanied by a sense of the
amount of work to be done as to be unpleasant.
The servant has to do only that at which he is
set. The workman in the factory has only his
own work, his especial duties. He is called to
do nothing more. He is not to try to attend to
the work of the rest. He has his own place. Nor

266 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
is the service so accompanied by after-thoughts as
to be a burden. The work done is left with the
Lord. Bitter reflection upon poor doing does not
exist. Christian service is gladsome because surren
dered to the Lord ; because in his keeping, his
protecting, his guiding, his supporting. You lay
every burden off, you cast every care away, you
are delivered from all anxiety. " Be careful for
nothing." The Christian works like the man who
in the morning is told what to do, and in the even
ing drops his care with his tools. He has nothing
of the worry which his employer has.
Further, the service is gladsome because vig
orous and natural. If the shining sun in all its
power and activity, in the rolling waves and
bursting floods of flaming gas and molten metal,
through its illimitable " spaces of fire," were con
scious of its shining only, without any regard to
the effects, that would be a happy consciousness.
The Bible says, " He rejoiceth as a strong man to
run a race," referring in figure to his eagerness,
because of his strength and his speed, to go
round the earth. So may the Christian rejoice
in his strength and skill.
Christian service gives gladness because you
want to be in such service ; you like it, you love
it. The law of service is not from without, but
is from within. Christ has gotten possession of

CHRISTIAN SERVICE 267
you and you want to do his will : his service is a
delight. Then, too, there is the character of the work.
It is rescue work, redeeming work. One is a par
taker with God in his most tender and magnifi
cent works, a co-worker with Christ to make men
glad. He is lifted up into his Lord and moves
with his moving. He, like Christ, is to others a
shadow in the heat. He, as Jesus did, throws
himself into the life of others ; to strengthen the
struggling, to steady the staggering, to right the
wronged. With a constant impulse and a perfect
confidence, he forever lives for others. In this
unlimited zeal he enters into his higher, his eternal
life, and is forever filled with all the peace such
self-surrender gives.
So, also, the Christian worker is happy because
of a peculiar presence of God with him. The
trainer with approving nods follows his boat's
crew and sends across the waters his cheer, es
pecially when particularly good work is being
done. Your friend is an athlete in a wrestle.
You cheer him, as with laborious breath, clenched
teeth, and locked limb he bends in that cramped
and screwed and swaying couple. The college
boys follow their racing crews with demonstra
tions of intense interest. So must Christ be
pleased with his workers.
Thus, then, the Lord's people are in a sense an

268 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
extension of the incarnation ; are a means by
which he is present ; are instruments of his grace,
revealing him, bringing him. From the summit
of every ridge, along down every valley, a thou
sand streams — one between every two hills — are
all moving into larger streams, and these into the
mighty river, and all carrying earth and sand and
worn-out vegetation to feed the great delta at the
mouth. So do Christians together make a great
river, conveying grace. Each is in a sense in
spired, and communicates of the Holy Ghost,
communicates after the mind and way of Christ.
One may have no adequate notion of whom he
influences, or by what, or how far ; but influence
he does, used of God he is. Believers are like
organ-reeds, which send each its own tone — sweet,
clear, and musical ; while the single melodies com
bine into a harmony in the air of heaven. Mean
while the player, with deft touch of feet and fin
gers, the whole body alert and engaged, follows
the score. And now the great congregation, fol
lowing on, is awakened, enkindled, inspired. Yes,
the believer is the heart and soul of divine truth
on this earth ; is the loftiest and yet lowliest rev
elation of God. The Christian calls and preaches
and judges and makes manifest and serves, as
nothing else does.

CHAPTER XXXII.
CHRISTIAN SUCCESS.
SUCCESS is not always at command, is not al
ways the direct result of labor, is not always the
particular reward of the particular laborer. Suc
cess is affected by circumstances over which the
worker has no control. The same person differs
in different places, or at different times in the
same place, as to the amount t)f his success. So,
also, persons with equal ability, faithfulness, and
apparently in circumstances equally favorable,
may differ in the amount of success.
Success is quite a matter of temperament,
tastes, and faculties ; quite a matter of powers
and training, of position ; and is in much far be
yond any ordinary person's reach. A successful
merchant, a successful manufacturer, a markedly
successful physician, owe far the most to facts
beyond personal control — facts of nature and
providence. The great lawyer and preacher and
artist are creations more of nature than of them
selves. " Promotion cometh neither from the
269

270 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
east, nor from the west, nor from the south.
But God is the judge : he putteth down one, and
setteth up another."
Success is not always visible success, marked,
apparent success. Success is accomplishing the
purpose for which you are sent. You may be
successful in the general success. Your particu
lar place may be very far from where the partic
ularly successful blows are being struck. This
may be illustrated in all sorts of work. Let the
Manager manage. Leave it to him to give you
your place. You are only responsible for a small
share. Your duty is individual ; is to do an especial
work and do it as well as you can, " every man ac
cording to his several ability," in the diversities
of gifts and the differences of place.
When the divine and the human go together,
and the divine is allowed properly to influence
the human, then man's action is successful, accord
ing to the divine intent of success. The will and
the work of the Lord are done. The thoughts
and feelings, the purposes and activities of the
man are according to a true nature, according
to the divine thinking and desiring. The man
works, but God works in and through him. The
man is personal, individual, but he is also an
organ, an instrument, of the Divine Spirit. Such
a fact, such an experience, is possible. This is
after the deliberate and orderly manner in which

CHRISTIAN SUCCESS 27 I
God everywhere causes things to grow, and
shapes them as he will. This is the way they
work in his service, and successfully, who have
the Holy Ghost within ; all such, from the hum
ble people here below up to the higher and the
highest goodly people above — those that reach
even to the throne of heaven.
One condition of success is the presentation of
religious truth. We read of being renewed by
knowledge. We read, " Sanctify them through
thy truth." By bringing truth to bear, a very
blasphemer may repent and glorify God ; he who
is naked and possessed may come to sit at the
feet of Jesus, clothed, and in right mind. The
truth prepares the way of the Lord : the presen
tation of the gospel, by character, by example, by
personal action, by Christian manner. These
things have weight; people are so made. Peace
makes others feel their want of peace. Convic
tion, amid the fogs of guesses, doubts, and rea
sonings, begets conviction. Trust begets trust,
hope begets hope.
As the virgins went to meet the bridegroom
with burning lamps, so it is ours to meet the
Lord in knowing him, in perceiving that of all
bright things he is the brightest, and of all best
things he is the best. When he is so seen, his
work, his life within, begins ; we love and serve
him. " And this is life eternal, that they might

272 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent." When there is no vision
there is no voice, and so men are dumb in praise,
in prayer, in testimony. Where there is nothing
seen or felt or known there is nothing to talk
about, there is no motive to work.
Take testimony. The simple testimony of a
God-fearing person may go home when an argu
ment would fail. Expression of peace, of con
fidence, has power sometimes. A proper wit
nessing may awaken a sleeping soul ; may set an
opposer to doubting; may be the means of con
version. Take enthusiasm : intellectually, its large ideas ;
emotionally, its warm, buoyant spirit ; practically,
its engagedness in Christian work. With it one
feels bold and strong ; he is fresh and enterprising.
From this enthusiasm in another there come ideas
into one's own mind, impulses to one's own soul,
waves of emotion, communications from above.
Still another condition of success is faith. In
the case of the man with the withered arm, faith
gave the power to come. In every divinely di
rected labor faith helps : faith in yourself, faith
in your methods, faith in the promises. This
very conviction, confidence, is an evidence of
God's presence ; an evidence that the Spirit has
begun to move somewhere ; an evidence that the
Lord is beginning to come in power. The farmer

CHRISTIAN SUCCESS 273
works his ground with faith in nature ; so do you
work with faith in grace — faith that certain agen
cies will reach certain results. We must feel our
dependence upon God for success ; upon his provi
dence to help us, his keeping us from making that
bad start which hampers all the way through, or
taking that false step which trips us. The re
sponse to the command to work in redemption
should be accompanied with faith in the help of
the great Worker. Stephen was " full of faith and
of the Holy Ghost." He who makes effort with
earnestness and wisdom, and is animated by faith,
may be sure that he is working in the Spirit, and
that in some way the divine favor will accom
pany his labors. Let him have faith, if he goes
"preaching the gospel," communicating religious
and moral truth, working along some line of be
nevolence to the poor, the sick, the distressed, the
ignorant. Let him have hope in reasonable suc
cess, sooner or later, who is ready to work in the
field to which God's providence assigns him. He
may be sure that he moves as he is moved by the
Holy Ghost, just as truly as holy men of old "spake
as they were moved by the Holy Ghost."
The spirit of Christian love is an element of
Christian success. Sympathy opens the heart to
receive your message if possible. Loving seems
to be quite essential to personal influence.
Yet another condition of Christian success is

274 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
patience: "patient continuance in well doing."
Because the worker is but part of a combination
of influences, waiting may be necessary. The
righteous man is like a tree which bringeth forth
its fruit in its season. We must wait in all our
fruits for the season. So, then, success may be
slow in coming, and patience is needed. The
ocean shore has clay and gravel and hard rock,
a compact barrier to withstand the ocean. But
the loose and moving waters now creep into
crevices, now work under layers, now plunge,
beating, battering. They keep at this day and
week and year. They remove great beds of
earth and gravel, remove the soft sandstone, and
even wear the granite. Who has not seen the
vast debris on beaches covered with sand and
gravel ? It is all owing to the patient breaking
of the waves on beach, in rocky cave, on head
land ; the running in of tides, the sweeping in of
currents, the driving in of storms, beating the
shore night and day, year by year. So do you
take time into account. It undermines, loosens,
and casts down ; it untangles, it softens asperities,
it lessens prejudices, it gives chance for better in
fluences. So we do well neither to sigh nor com
plain, but patiently to hold on.
We are to let the Lord take his time. " It is
good that a man should both hope and quietly
wait for the salvation of the Lord." "Behold,

CHRISTIAN SUCCESS 275
the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of
the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he
receive the early and latter rain." The crea
tion of the world was slow. There were seem
ingly no rapid changes, no sudden transitions, no
great catastrophes ; each period seemed to pass
slowly into the next. So the movement upward of
the solid crust of the earth here and there from
the sea-bottom or from the shore is imperceptible,
but change there is. The growth of the corn in
the garden is imperceptible, but growth there is.
A long effort may be followed by sudden re
sults. The great Reformation, though occasioned
by Luther, was caused by forces which had been
in operation a hundred years. The French Rev
olution was preparing for fifty years at least; but
when it came it came with the suddenness and the
power of fire. The destruction of slavery in the
United States was preparing for forty years, but
it came in four. Mr. Moffat labored long in the
Kuruman valley in South Africa without a con
vert. But one spring, as suddenly as the gardens
come up and grow in that sandy soil, did the whole
tribe come out for Christ. In a few weeks he
gathered in the fruits of thirteen years of labor.
Similar was it with the laborers in the Society
Islands of the South Pacific.
But our success is dependent somewhat on
spiritual wisdom. We are to work on God's

276 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
plan, under his direction. Indeed we must not
go at certain works until reasonably sure of a
call. It is right to cast out devils, but the seven
sons of one Sceva, a Jew, tried it and failed.
Sometimes we try to do that which God has not
really called us to do. We want to do it and
yet we fail in it, and this because it is not God's
work for us. God said to Moses, and says to
every worker of his, " See thou make all things
according to the pattern showed thee in the
mount." God will provide a field of labor,
materials to work with, skill and courage for the
labor. Much discouragement and failure in this
world might have been avoided had men sought
the divine guidance about all their work. They
are to help God in his work rather than have
God help them in their work with their way of
doing it. Then, as the little honey-bee makes
no mistake in finding his hive or making his cell,
so they shall make no mistake. To cross a swamp
needs considerable skill ; so to sail a boat in rough
water and weather. The success in doing these
things is a proof of the skill.
With these graces you use aright your instru
mentalities ; and God's grace, somewhere, at
some time, and somehow, comes as the sap comes
through the boughs and branches, swells the
buds and pushes out the leaves, opens the flower
and matures the fruit. With these graces the

CHRISTIAN SUCCESS 277
Holy Spirit acts upon your instrumentalities, as
wind or water, steam or electricity, act upon ma
chinery. The power bears on shaft, wheel, and
belt, on auger and chisel, on screw and saw. The
wheels, cranks, and pistons, the axles, planes, and
pulleys, are now doing their work. Spiritual
power comes to make, somewhere and to some
extent, heart-experience, religious principle, moral
practice. The Lord is the great author of success. He un
derstands best the ways and means and obstacles,
and has the most power to affect these. He is
like the water distilling from land and lake, river
and ocean ; rising in vapor to cool the air of sum
mer and warm that of winter; falling in rain to
quicken soil and plant, or in snow to cover root
and seed, grass and grain. He who energizes all
forces and vitalizes all seeds, and who, separate
from all, is yet in all that is, he gives substance
and fiber, spirit and power, to every person, " just
so far and just so fast as it is possible for that per
son to receive." He is like the ocean, with the
tides that beat and tumble over the reefs, that
cross the bars and fill the bays, that run up the
estuaries and the rivers ; the great ocean, that in
all its great fullness has enough and to spare to
pour itself everywhere. The indwelling of the
Spirit of the Lord so perfects and endows a man
that he shall have the largest power and the

278 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
largest freedom possible in every region of his
life ; that he shall be the least selfish and the most
brotherly; shall be the deeper, broader, truer
man ; shall have the richest and strongest nature
possible. Such may be our great experience.
He, the only One to whom we turn in discourage
ment, is the One to turn to for success. He makes
us to enter with more than common heart and zeal
and wisdom into his redeeming work.
Besides, in the divine will and way and order a
special influence accompanies all preaching, teach
ing, and talking, all prayer, praise, and use of the
Word. The Spirit comes by these channels as
the water of New York comes through the New
and the Croton Aqueduct, running, the one on
the surface of the earth and over the Harlem, the
other under the surface and below the Harlem, to
enter ten thousand homes. So by channels the
Spirit enters the hidden life of every soul that
opens itself to God, and fills it with himself.
An illuminated Bible is far more useful than
one not illuminated. A sacrament administered
by one in the Spirit has far more power than
when not so administered. You enter into God
and he enters into you ; and you have found the
secret of power. " He that abideth in me, and I
in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit." The
church works by a cultivated ministry, an attrac
tive building and service, by exquisite music and

CHRISTIAN SUCCESS 279
a crowded congregation. But the church works
most successfully for its true ends when the Holy
Ghost is in minister and singer, worshiper and
worker ; when social, intellectual, and artistic in
fluences are thoroughly filled with those that are
moral and spiritual. The kingdom of God — the
real, invisible, secret, spiritual kingdom of the
Lord's hidden ones and praying ones and believ
ing ones and working ones — is not in word, but
in power; is not in the voice, the tones of the
speaker ; is not in his attitudes ; is not in his ges
tures and bodily presence. But mainly, does he
carry the Holy Ghost? The importance of all
natural power and skill in service is evident on
every side. But after all, the spiritual inspira
tion, direction, and joy, while coming along the
lines of manner and art and natural force, come
by the authority and force of a consecrated soul
behind these. Real, heartfelt, earnest piety back
of one's proving and persuading and administering
is as powder to ball. " I in them " is the motto
for workers. The kingdom of God is not in the
mere Bible or service or sacrament, but in human
ity charged with divinity. What was first of all
in the thought of Jesus, in the thought of his dis
ciples, was the Holy Ghost. Jesus said, " Tarry
ye at Jerusalem until ye receive power from on
high." Paul said, " Ye shall receive power, when
the Holy Ghost is come upon you." And the

280 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
disciples ever said, " Have ye received the Holy
Ghost?" It is the Spirit in you that must be
below all enthusiasm and behind all energy. It
is the perpetual inspiration of Jesus Christ that
alone will enable you to reach your highest suc
cess. This was the great power in the prophets,
in Jesus, in Paul ; " the powers of the world to
come." It is not fury and heat and tumult of
thought, but greatness and vigor and calm, this
power of God. And it is victory, or — to die in
the Lord.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
JOY IN GOD.
THE gospel is glad tidings. It was proclaimed
with an outgush of song from heaven. It is full
of Christian psalmody ; full of the inspiration of
the Holy Ghost. It is righteousness, peace, and
joy in the Holy Ghost. One possibility of the
especial divine indwelling is to make this earthly
existence to have something of joy, and to make
the heavenly to be full of it. It is as two stars,
a lesser going round a greater, this very bright
and that very faint, and yet the inferior ever the
brighter for its companionship with the superior.
To describe Christian joy is like describing a
luster, a fragrance. Joy is exhilaration ; it is ele
vation of feeling; it is a making melody in the
heart ; it is mounting up with wings. It is invol
untary, without effort ; coming at times like the
flood in the stream, at times without one's will
or choice. Yet it is subject to variations; it
ebbs and flows like the tide. Alternations of feel
ing are natural. Many a stream has its rise and
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282 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
fall ; many a bright day has its clouds. " One star
differeth from another star in glory," and one
sphere from another sphere in life and happiness.
There is the joy of the rippling brook, and of the
stream dashing and dancing, its rush and leap and
whirl through the ravine ; the joy of all the re
joicing earth. There is the bee's hum, the voice
of the bird, and the burst of the whole morning
choir. Life chirps, or drums, or crows, or sings —
life in flood or field, in earth or air ; its pulse is mu
sical ; it makes the lamb to gambol and the kitten
to sport, the girl to romp and the boy to shout.
There is the joy of spring and of the morning; the
joy of recovery, of reunion, of an open door ; the
joy of a thousand things ; it lifts up the head, and
for a little upon the inner eye the paradise ap
pears. Then the joy of wit and humor and the
ludicrous ; the lover's lot, the mother's heart, the
father's pride ; all the enchantments of adventure
and enterprise, of the heroic and the chivalrous.
Everywhere do we meet with joy, even in this
world of sin and death. It comes up continually,
like the waves of the sea.
But an inspired singer says, " Thou hast put
gladness in my heart, more than in the time that
their corn and their wine increased." In this
glory of all life, this coming nigh to God, this
sharing with Christ, there is a sharing of his joy.
When the soul springs like a bird to its own

JOY IN GOD 283
sphere, when the divine life enters especially into
us, then comes our highest joy, a freshness, a re
sponsiveness to creation, to others, and to God, that
makes us in gratitude and love to see the ever
lasting beauty behind all beauty and the ever
lasting goodness behind all goodness. We hear
the music of earth and the music of heaven ; we
have all the views of south land and north land,
in nature and in grace. Our life is that of a bird
swinging on the topmost bough and singing ; that
of a child never ready to come in if playing,
never hungry if starting a journey ; but a run, a
jump, and a shout. There has been more Chris
tian joy than we can conceive of; there is more
for each than the most do get. The joy of the
church rises like the voice of the never-sleeping,
ever-sounding sea.
Jesus in heavenly light and life was at times
full of heavenly gladness. " Who for the joy that
was set before him endured the cross." His
first miracle was at a marriage festival. His last
conversation was, "That my joy might remain,
. . . and that your joy might be full."
Similar is the story of the early disciples. In
Jerusalem they " did eat their meat with glad
ness." In Samaria "there was great joy." In
Antioch the disciples " were filled with joy and
with the Holy Ghost."
As to its sources. This joy is natural. It is

284 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
the joy of a religious man's healthy body; it is
the joy of a Christian mind in the study and pos
session of spiritual truth ; it is the joy of a good
conscience ; it is the joy of benevolence. Gospel
experience tends naturally to give a border of
brightness to all earthly surroundings. The Chris
tian in his toil and endurance feels that he has
glory, honor, and eternal life. To him even the
earth bears somewhat the aspect of heaven.
There is a great shining in his soul. He rises to
mountain summits and beholds distant glories;
he sees that earth and heaven meet. The stream
of his joy receives from all rills and brooks and
streams of nature.
This joy is also supernatural, is from a source
beyond nature, is of the Holy Ghost, is of God
in us. We are joyful in his joy. In the special
presence in the soul of the universal Spirit one
has joy. When the Life that beats and breathes
in the universe comes especially into the soul one
has joy. The Wise Man says, " God giveth to a
man that is good in his sight, wisdom, and know
ledge, and joy." The nearer to God the more
the joy ; its flush is of the heavenly fire ; it is the
emotion of a soul in him.
One may, if he will, walk here and work here
and rest here and live here, be happy in the
Lord and in all that is the Lord's — the earth, the
body, the work ; in all he is in Immanuel's land.

JOY IN GOD 285
Beulah land. He who gives their songs to the
birds gives these joys to his. " In thy name
shall they rejoice all the day." He who is born
of God and bought of God, he who is taught of
God and led of God, is an inhabitant of the
hills, the heavenly hills, the Delectable Moun
tains. Like the beauty of the foundations of the New
Jerusalem, this divine and spiritual gladness is
from twelve precious stones; it comes from the
presence of those jewels of God, the graces. It
is of religious principles and practices, of states
and exercises of the heart.
There is the joy of illumination. In the light
from above, in the vision of the love and glory of
God, in the vision of our Lord, in himself and his
offices, there is uplifting sunshine ; the joy of him
who is the Light of the World, the Sun of Right
eousness, the Bright and Morning Star. There
is the joy of one whose mind is made clear ; who
beholds in all the wonderful world things many,
of guidance, comfort, and emancipation. The
land on which this light shines is not a dark, but
a bright land, one where the fairest live, and live
a long while, and with joy draw water out of the
wells of salvation. We all know how dull the
scene in a hard, dark, chilly day — how unpoetic ;
and then the change in our mood — how we lift
Up — when the sun lights up. So spiritual illumi-

286 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
nation lights up our material world, our home,
our social world, our work-world.
There is the joy of faith, of saving faith, of
sense of guilt removed. Thousands have felt it
in its freshness and fullness, this thrilling first
experience of religion, this burst of the new-born
soul singing, " I will greatly rejoice, . . . my soul
shall be joyful in my God; for he hath clothed
me with the garments of salvation." And there
is the joy of all faith in him who is the river that
makes glad the city of God, him who is the ladder
of the dream of Jacob, and carries us from earth
to heaven. The Apostle said, " Believing, ye
rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory."
He could neither measure nor describe it, but it
rolled his soul along, and on, and on, like a rush
ing stream, to the endless sea.
There, too, is the joy of hope. " We ... re
joice in hope of the glory of God." In the heart
in Christ hope flashes and beams, and fills the
soul with singing: hope of the leadings of the
Spirit ; hope of rising from the dead ; hope of de
liverances and transitions and likenesses through
the working of the great and powerful agency
within us ; hope " that mortality might be swal
lowed up of life"; "hope of the glory of God."
Hope is a bird, free, flying, soaring. Hope is
a child ; ever is something beckoning — birthday,
Christmas, vacation, a visit. The Christian antici-

JOY IN GOD 287
pates ; he has the brightest, sunniest, most de
lightful of expectations. " I will see you again,"
said Jesus, " and your heart shall rejoice, and
your joy no man taketh from you." " I am the
door;" from what, and unto what? The Lord
in the Apocalypse is seated on a rainbow throne,
seal of covenant and token of hope. There is the
future; the sense of good things now, the hope
of good things then ; new thoughts, new loves,
new words, new sights to see, new efforts made.
Joy is the sea-bird flying out over the ocean
of the future. When the Christian looks back in
review, looks around in observation, looks forward
in expectation, his feeling is, " Lord, thou hast
done great things for me, whereof I am glad."
One of old sang, " Thou wilt show me the path
of life : in thy presence is fullness of joy." Stead
ily as the stars that future shines.
Sometimes the joy of assurance is ours. We
are rescued, transformed, irradiated, filled. We
feel sure that we are to have the eternal blessed
ness. The very heavens are opened ; the angels
of God are ascending and descending. We are
saved. The trees of the field wave it, the birds
of the air repeat it in their songs.
There is the joy of obedience, of service ren
dered the Lord, of duty done ; the feelings rise
like the waves, that none can keep down. A
good conscience is pure delight; it carries one

288 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
along like a fair wind a ship. In the doing one's
duty on all lower planes is a certain joy ; but
much more so in the doing one's duty on the
higher planes. Said the psalmist, " I delight to
do thy will, O my God." Devotedness in obedi
ence to the Lord is a joyous service. " Blessed
are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it."
This life which is distinct in itself and yet is
life in another has the joy of Christian service,
the joy of disseminating the gospel, the special
presence and blessing of the Master. It is a glad
service ; it cheers one as he goes on in it. As
men march to music, so Christians march — stead
ily, buoyantly, full of life ; happy souls, ever sing
ing when in the service of their Saviour. Faith
and love and hope and God's presence make
them cheery.
And there is the gladness of success. Spon
taneous is the shout of success ; this anywhere
and everywhere. But in religion there is in the
shout an inspiration of God, a lofty and exultant
hymn and song of the soul. We have been put
to the- work and we have won by labors ; have
been put to the fighting and we have won by
strokes. There is the joy of jubilee.
There is delight in the ordinances. " Serve the
Lord with gladness : come before his presence with
singing." Here in religious meeting, here in his
house, entering into his high and holy ordinances,

JOY IN GOD 289
is the Lord of glory himself. The spirit is quick
ened ; the eye is cleared, and opened to the hea
venly things; the heart receives many tokens of
the divine goodness, and is light. It kindles to a
flame, becomes filled with holy ardor and resolu
tion, maybe gets into the very sunlight of heaven.
There is the joy of festivals. At Christmas,
the festival of the incarnation, with feasting and
with joy we celebrate the birth of our Saviour.
Then the blessed angels stopped their endless
songs in heaven, and their melody, unutterable by
us, rose and fell on earth ; a distinct and special
song of those they sing unceasingly. They sang
in joy that God was given to man; sang of the
Redeemer, of the living Lord come in human form
to lighten all that lives. And every anniversary is
a day of heaven, a day of gladness to those severed
from God and slaves of sin. The Liberator is
here. From the beginning he had been coming.
The first steps of Jehovah in the eventide of
paradise were the first steps of the Promised
One toward his coming in the flesh. Now is the
faith of the fathers realized. And Simeon in his
turn in the temple, waiting, standing for them all,
exclaims, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant
depart in peace : ... for mine eyes have seen thy
salvation." It had been a long watch, that of him
and his ; it is over. The " fullness of time " is
come. That angels' song in the midnight calm

29O THE DIVINE INDWELLING
has been followed by many a broad, bright sun
rise. There is the joy of those persecuted for right
eousness' sake. When the apostles had been
beaten, "they departed from the presence of
the council rejoicing." One's spiritual percep
tions may become so clear as to give, in some in
stances, a joy that takes away suffering. Stephen
in his dying had a vision that made his face to
shine. Paul and Silas, hungry and beaten with
rods, in the stocks and at midnight, sang praises,
and all the prisoners heard them. When the
venerable Ignatius, who had been a disciple of
St. John, was looking forward to his martyrdom,
he had so much of that joy which is a fruit of the
Spirit that not only his enemies, but his friends,
were astonished.
And so the stream of joy receives from all rills
and brooks and streams of the works, the Word,
and the Spirit of God. On its banks we hear the
music of earth and the music of heaven. On its
bosom we have all views in nature, in society,
and in religion. This bright spirit is true and
healthy and wholesome ; it gives vigor. It does
not overtire the body or blunt the perceptions or
confuse the reflections. It does not dissipate the
mind or enervate the soul ; it concentrates the
mind and strengthens the soul. It makes more

JOY IN GOD 291
easy the inconveniences and infelicities of life ;
the natural afflictions, sad and heavy as they some
times are. Often is joy the flower, heart's-ease,
on the river's shore, while he who plucks it heals
his hurt. The bent one straightens up again.
When the Jews returning from Babylon wept at
the foundation of their temple because of its little
ness and their weakness, the prophet said, " The
joy of the Lord is your strength." If we have to
travel, let us have this joy to travel with; if to
labor, this joy to labor with ; if to suffer, this joy
to suffer with. The Christian soldier never fights
so well as when he fights in joy.
Then let us remember that this joy belongs not
to things fleeting, but to things abiding. Storms
cannot destroy, fire cannot burn, water cannot
drown it. It belongs to the sea, with its ebb and
flow forever ; to the infinite throng of those stars
that never wear nor grow dim. It is the radi
ance of heaven on earth. We need it in this
world. But what is the joy of heaven? The joy of
perfect completeness, perfect soundness, perfect
health, perfect relations with all that is about,
all personal surroundings, all nature, all society ;
the sinful and sorrowful state ended, victory at
last ; the mists lifted from valley and hillside, and
a whole bright new world in view. Study con-

292 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
stellation after constellation in those heavens;
now slowly and now quickly pursue your way
until the whole world of glory breaks in; and
then know how much they have gained whom
earth has lost.

CHAPTER XXXIV.
PEACE IN GOD.
IT is noteworthy, the continual allusion in the
Epistles to peace in connection with God, to
peace as coming from God, and to peace in the
souls of believers. Every one of Paul's Epistles
opens with the invocation of peace. Those of
Peter and John make the invocation over and
over. In studying the Spirit's work upon us we come
at last to peace. Sometimes, on a summer's day,
one storm follows another; the sky gets heavy
with vapor and dark with cloud, and down comes
the rain ; but suddenly all is clear and the warm
sunbeams are felt. So is life ; often, or occasion
ally, there are storms. In these it is good to get
that restfulness which is in the Lord and his work.
In whatever storm, the Christian can have Jesus
sooner or later appear and say, " Peace, be still;"
can see him walking on the waves, and hear him
say, "It is I; be not afraid;" in whatever fear,
293

294 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
behind closed doors, can have him suddenly
appear and say, " Peace be unto you."
It is of this precious and supreme peace that I
wish to speak. A great teaching is here, a great
gift from the other world to us in this hurrying
world, and from him who is Lord in it. God's
child need not be feverish or hurried or fretted ;
need not be bustling or restless. He can let go
his cares, and by ministries of nature and grace
be cared for.
Peace is the result of causes. A common
seed is the result of movement, system, and
cause at work. Fruit is a result of root and stem,
of branches and leaves ; a result of the flowers
with stamens and pistils. Strawberry or rasp
berry or blackberry, all berries and apples, all
pods and cones and nuts, come thus. So peace
is a result: a result of perfect appropriation of
the Lord, a result of his indwelling.
God mostly works in peace, in quiet ways.
Even the making and finishing of the earth must
have been comparatively quiet ; the putting the
loose material into beds, the laying of the strata,
the lifting of the continents ; even the dislocation
of the rocks and the breaking up the framework of
the mountains ; the spreading the rubbish of their
ruin — these mighty works were done in much still
ness. Go out early on a summer morning, when
all the grass, the shrubs, the trees stand in life ; or

PEACE IN GOD 295
walk in mind through all the earth of herbs and
trees. The upholding, on-moving power is be
yond thought, and yet the action is the still
sweep of the river of life. God works and yet
rests, and his resting hinders not his working, and
in his working he has rest — infinite rest and eternal
peace. So in grace he mostly works in a quiet
way. The light comes without your feeling it. It
steals on and over the earth, the gleam of it on
everything. We do not hear the sound of its
coming; we but open our eyes and are in the
midst of it. Quietly comes the light of God, re
vealing form and substance in things unseen. In
it one perceives unerringly the way of life, the
great privileges and duties of the Christian, and
rests in the vision.
God gives peace. He who made the breadth
of the sky and the silence of the field to be in
somewhat symbols of himself, gave this heavenly
peace to his Son, who in turn gives it to us. Down
from God in his eternal rest it comes to his child,
that he may go an even way ; may have no anx
iety, no strife, no shock ; may not let go his hold
on God when the world or the devil storms in,
nor be appalled when every evil seems to have
arrived. Sometimes in such case peace rises
until it fills the soul.
God does not wait to the last to give this bless
ing, but gives it now, that each may go comfor-

296 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
tably his way through all the fatigue, the trial, and
assault of life. " I will give you rest." As to
those who walk with our Lord, as his light be
comes somewhat their light, his love their love,
so his peace becomes somewhat their peace.
While he had feelings that would rise and fall,
while he had to give attention and get tired, yet
he was quiet. In prophecy it was said of him,
" He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice
to be heard in the street ;" and he was called "the
Prince of Peace." Now to them who are with
him in the sonship the Lord gives of this peace.
When he wanted to leave to his disciples all that
he could to make up for their loss he touchingly
says, " Peace I leave with you." One here and
another there receive this peace of the Master.
When he reigns peace shall reign ; this in families
and churches, in communities and nations ; no
heated controversies, no bitter quarrels, no more
fighting. " And they shall beat their swords into
plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks :
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more."
Further, this great and splendid possibility of
the Christian comes by the other graces. It
comes by faith ; the vision of faith tends to peace.
In our faith we leave with God our cares and
desires, our labors and sorrows. We cease to be
tossed about by every wind that blows. Abraham

PEACE IN GOD 297
received rest by believing God concerning a home
and a son. So may any one have peace who is
convinced that the Lord reigns and that " all
things work together for good to them that love
God." However much shall happen in the day,
its beginning is still. The green fields are quiet,
perhaps in part because we are quiet who look
at them ; are mentally and physically rested.
All around in the stillness is the glittering sun
shine. A boundless and unbroken peace is sug
gested. So the spiritual vision, while lively and
vigorous, is calm and composing.
Faith makes wonderfully for peace : the steady
leaning on Him who cannot fail or be mistaken,
who has made general promises for general states
and special promises for special states ; the sense
of God's help against all evil, and of God's keep
ing for all good ; every interest secure come what
may ; confidence in God's knowledge and method
and power. One can look sin in the face, fear in
the face, sickness in the face, death in the face.
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose
mind is stayed on thee : because he trusteth in
thee." Peace also comes by love. God is love and
dwells in its everlasting rest, and would have his
own so dwell. To love as he loves, even all
things good, is to make one's self to be in peace.
Peace comes by hope. It is the pathos of life

298 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
to toil and struggle, wear out and finally lie down.
Now hope, in shape and grace an angel of para
dise, is sent to earth to minister to man. " Hope
and quietly wait" — quietly for treasures of rest
for souls tired with this world's work ; quietly for
celestial freedoms from toil and care, from sick
ness and sorrow, from disappointment and pain ;
quietly wait for the coming of Him who will not
tarry. To look forward to this, neither tiring in
action nor in thought, is the beginning of the
soul's everlasting rest, is the first-fruits of the
peace within everlasting glory.
It gives peace to obey : to be ready to do ; to
have the mind made up now; to stand at rest
waiting to go in God's direction and rule. In
good conscience, in duty done, is tranquillity ; in
the laws of life kept is the peace of health. In
every case it is true, " Great peace have they
which love thy law." As the divine indwelling
makes men subject to the divine order, peace
reigns. It is because the earth, the moon, the
inferior planets and the superior, move each in its
place that they never collide in their wonderful
progression. Momentum enough there is in the
mighty revolutions, but there is a steady, direc
tive force, and a ready yielding to that force.
All the circling of these worlds, rolling in the
sunlight, is obedient to the heavenly wisdom;
hence harmony throughout the system from

PEACE IN GOD 299
boundary to boundary. So in man " the work
of righteousness shall be peace"; the work of
law and order. The righteousness may be by a
process and the peace may be by a process, but
finally the work will be done.
Thus in the graces is the beginning of peace in
all its forms. In those powers are the eternal
roots of this fair tree. On such ground does the
fair building rise.
Of the nature of this peace not much need be
said ; and yet he who has found this secret of ex
istence has something to say. This peace is not
the gratification of every innocent desire; it is
only acquiescence with things, though not a
guilty acquiescence; it is reconciliation, which is
not always satisfaction. It is more easily gotten
than satisfaction, though both are often sought
where not found. It is not the ending of work
and fatigue. It is not exemption from temptation
— even the Saviour was not so exempt. It is not
exemption from struggle with evil in its various
forms — even the Saviour was not so exempt.
There is the peace of the night: the sun has
set; the labor and struggle of the day are over;
nothing more can be done till the sun rises ; the
curtains are drawn ; one is at home. Let worry
sink like a stone to the bottom of the stream.
There is no telling the peace which night has
brought to earth's weary millions ; the peace it has

30O THE DIVINE INDWELLING
brought in every age, the peace it brings in every
land. It is an ancient, it is a present longing, that
for the setting of the sun. There is the Lord's
day: free of distraction and burden-bearing, a
rest for the weary brain and troubled heart, a re
freshing and renewal. That which one sees and
takes of the Lord makes that life be such a day.
" The year of jubilee rolls round,
And we, by faith made whole,
Have rest from sin, a peace profound,
The sabbath of the soul."
There is rest from fear of some near or far-
future ill ; a firm confidence in God ; a deliver
ance from imaginative evils, from worries. There
is a " casting all your care upon him " ; not one
care, but all care. There is the peace of the
child put into the cradle from the mother's arms :
the soft bed, the slow rocking, the lulling song;
the gentle, trusted presence ; the adjusting if need
be ; strong arms if need be. So in the Lord we
cease from our trying and our crying, our anxious
thought. His face draws us, and by his presence
we overcome.
There is rest from all disquieting and anxious
reasonings — reasonings perplexed by insolvable
mysteries, reasonings where reason is not power
ful enough to give rest. One leaves the system of
things with God, and gets above this nature that

PEACE IN GOD

301

has done so much to make us and to mar us, this
nature that is so often the cause of our failure,
this nature that makes us hard toil and sharp
pain and heavy bereavement. He gets above the
circumstances that sour and irritate and some
times madden. He gets to be patient in trial,
submissive in disappointment, forgiving in all in
jury, and at rest in all evil ; for his life is " hid
with Christ in God." The world has its com
motions, its contentions ; but amid all its agitation
and strife there may come this experience, fresh
out of heaven. Paul had this peace when false
doctrines were rife and he was very zealous for
the true; when religious discussion was abroad
and he himself was a leader in it ; when persecu
tion was rife and he was in prison and maybe to
die. Still he wrote to the Colossians : " Let the
peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which
also ye are called."
There is peace with one's self. Though weak
ness there be, and defects there be, and sins there
be, still one has in much given up self-care and
handed himself over to God. One puts the ter
rible discords of selfishness and anger and all the
other evil beasts into Christ's keeping ; the strife
that one would have over, and the risings that he
would have forever put down ; all the fight with
sins in the body and sins within the soul is put
under Christ's charge. There is peace with one's

302 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
body, with its debility, its disease, its aging ; peace
with one's mental constitution and all one's natural
make-up. This is spiritual peace: like the night of the
city, the treadmills of toil are deserted, the last
roll of the city's thunder has ceased, the streets
gleam in the light of the moon, and there is no
sound. It is a ministry of peace, like the quiet
of the broad, deep river and of the mountains
through which it runs ; like the quiet of the
woods ; you quit the houses, you cross the fields,
you enter the woods, you are in their great still
ness. So is it when God's eternal work is wrought
in us, and that sweet promise is fulfilled, " My
people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation, and
in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting-places."
It is the peace of the Lord and a part of our
completeness in him. Every fair day of his has
in the peace of nature an emblem of this. Every
church service has in its stillness an emblem of
this. Even the very subtle and sweet harmony
of our praises who stand singing below is an
emblem of this.
More and more in the manifestation of the
Spirit is there peace. It is natural peace. With
it things are natural, we are natural. Unique
soul-possession as it is, it is felt amid natural
surroundings and the world's life. There need

PEACE IN GOD 303
be no withdrawing into solitudes. The imagina
tive and metaphysical and mystical theory of
some about it is not true to it ; for their peace
when experienced is unsubstantial and unnatu
ral. It is, indeed, possible to see or trust or
love without thought or word or motion, and in
our inmost souls to go forth into that which is
seen or trusted or loved ; and this gives peace.
But spiritual peace embraces far more than the
peace of contemplation or than the calm of
changeless, motionless absorption. Especially is
it more than that false peace where the ideal is
realized : to do and think and feel and will as
little as possible ; one sinking away into an eter
nal afternoon rest; one counting to be still the
height of enjoyment. Our Lord's peace is not
blank vacuity of soul, unthinking ecstasy ; the
leaving sense and thought behind; the being a
placid lake to receive and reflect images ; the re
posing in a kind of nothingness ; no real self-
moved thought or prayer or praise. All this is
unnatural ; it is will power, and in the very name
of the annihilation of will. Peace is not the con
tinually making one's self as a waveless, tideless
ocean. In spiritual peace you have the naturally
varied life of man, the varied objects of thought
and affection ; you behold things one by one and
in succession, and see to-morrow what you did

304 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
not see to-day; you have peace in connection
with all the movements of natural life.
It is living peace : life on every side, yet
peace. One has toil even, strain even; one has
thought and word and motion, sight and know
ledge ; one takes in things great or beautiful or
wise ; all the things of Him who made them all.
There is life, broad, deep, and active ; there is the
hush of a heart of fire and not of ice ; the calm
of a face ruddy with life and not white in death.
You enter a great manufactory. You see the
engine. One sits by it in a chair, and on a car
pet governs it by a touch, and it moves every
shaft and belt in the building ; yet it is noiseless.
Step out upon the lawn in the evening and look
up to the sky. There are tremendous bodies
moving at tremendous speed, and yet in their in
conceivable swiftness as they bowl through space
there is no noise. In this shining firmament, with
its eternal tranquillity and yet everlasting move
ment, we have a perfect symbol of the eternal
spirit-world. There is the final and everlasting peace. Those
dying in the Lord depart into this peace. Every
faithful one shall depart into " the rest that re-
maineth for the people of God." He that in
paradise is united to God has no disturbance —
none from fear, none from pain, none from sin.
Where fear and pain and sin are not, and unceas-

PEACE IN GOD 305
ing grace forever reigns, there shall be unwearying
and unwearied rest. They have peace and ever
lasting rest, the holy angels and the spirits of
just men made perfect, who reach to hear the
heavenly anthem that sounds and plays for ay.

CHAPTER XXXV.
GLORIFICATION.
JESUS in his last conversation spoke of a future
and blessed state in which he thoroughly believed
with all his human soul. He passed into that
state in his ascension, as our forerunner. Life in
him carries us to a greater life in him. Read
carefully and you will see this perfecting and
glorifying, this completing of salvation. This is
the last doctrine, the last subject of faith, the
great experience — this glorification. It is the
final mystery of redemption, an enlarged work
and measure of special divine impulse. All the
sons of God have come to their great inheritance.
There are beginnings of the Spirit upon earth,
where unnumbered people have received some
thing of it, and from whence numberless persons
have by it been raised to reign in everlasting life :
all the born and unborn little ones ; all that greater
host than ever, the living host on the earth; all
the innocent; and all those who have lived by
306

GLORIFICATION 307
faith : these " shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament." This glory is but revealed. We know not the
manner of its coming, its outbursting, its bright
appearance. It may be instantaneous, it may be
gradual. Things in the Bible point to its being
like the lightning. Individual differences shall
continue : " One star differeth from another star
in glory." The body shall exist, of the Spirit and
glorified. The same resurrection in the Lord's
case and in ours.
There is transition : change from one state to
another, a sinful to a sinless. " This corruptible
must put on incorruption, and this mortal must
put on immortality." Finally, the present system
makes transition. There comes a " restitution of
all things " ; a righting and restoring.
There is translation : a change from one place
to another ; from the visible to the invisible, from
earth to heaven. There shall be a land, and you
may rest assured that it shall be a homelike land.
To be sure, we enter within boundaries without
the present visible earth, but they exist for our
future human experience.
There is transformation : a change from one
form to another; from a dying to an undying
body ; to a form fashioned from within, even as
with the seed that springs up in the earth, the
warmth, and the moisture.

308 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
So, then, the present form shall perish; we
shall die. Jesus said, " Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit." The Old Testament calls, " He
giveth his beloved sleep," and the New Testa
ment responds, of " the dead in Christ," of them
"which are fallen asleep in Christ." Tenderly,
and in words which are a prophecy, is this death,
which is everywhere, changed, transformed, into a
life which is forever, by some readjustment, into
a life in new forms.
Now we understand the Scriptures : that hope
of the Old Testament, the coming of the Lord;
and that hope of the New Testament, the return
of the Lord. Now we understand the pointing
forward of much Christian doctrine and even of
Christian ordinances.
Now we understand the longing of the saints :
that old singer's sure feeling, though he be dead
ages ago : " But God will redeem my soul from
the power of the grave;" the Apostle's narration
of experience : " For we that are in this tabernacle
do groan, being burdened : not for that we would
be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality
might be swallowed up of life;" his further testi
mony : " We also, which have the first-fruits of the
Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves,
waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption

GLORIFICATION 309
of our body." Here is something to be reached
after and taken hold of. This is the goal, this
" the prize of the high calling of God in Christ
Jesus." For this the earnest expectation of the
creature waits. To this the believer looks for
ward. " Rivers to the ocean run,
Nor stay in all their course ;
Fire ascending seeks the sun ;
Both speed them to their source ;
So a soul that's born of God
Pants to view his glorious face."
There are natural and supernatural longings :
to welcome deliverance from the bondage of cor
ruption; to triumph by faith over the king of
terrors. With such intensity of desire some reach
after that glorious consummation, the endless
life.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CONCLUSION.

I HAVE now tried to put the doctrine of the
divine indwelling not as vague, uncertain, and
indefinite — something shadowy — but rather as
something certain and substantial. I have tried
to state the teaching clearly and positively. I
have attempted to unfold and establish it, to
amplify and illustrate it.
We have been studying the mystery of the
words of Jesus: "Abide in me, and I in you;"
studying the Divine Being, not as transcendent,
but as immanent, as in a mystical union with us ;
as essential, fundamental. He is not simply the
support of conviction and conversion ; not sim
ply the radical beginning, but also the continu
ing ; the support of all the great generic states of
Christian experience, all the gracious affections in
their fervor, all the gracious practices in their de
votion. The great conception is of him with God
in him. However hidden God may be, he is the
great underlying power in the universe. How-
310

CONCLUSION 3 1 1
ever hidden you may be, in shade or silence, his
Spirit is in you.
The very genius and spirit of our experience
and our Bible is this great free gift of God, this
presence and activity of his Spirit.
In experience you make the discovery of his
nearness : just the opening of the eyes of faith.
Paul says, " Striving according to his working,
which worketh in me mightily." However he
knew it, he had it. He may have known it by
direct consciousness, by the witness of the Spirit;
or he may have known it by its effects. Was
there, on the one hand, a direct assurance, or, on
the other, a feeling like that of physical vigor, an
exhilaration ; or again, simply a belief, a convic
tion drawn from certain evidences of the fruits of
the Spirit?
In the Bible the Old Testament points out the
Spirit's indwelling as the great privilege of New
Testament times. As in Ezekiel : " And I will
put my Spirit within you;" in Joel: "And it
shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour
forth my Spirit upon all flesh." The last of the
prophets, John the Baptist, said, " He that Com
eth after me shall baptize you with the Holy
Ghost." The last emphatic word of our Lord
was concerning this; his last and chief thought-
and desire. He said, " It is expedient for you
that I go away : for if I go not away, the Com-

312 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
forter will not come unto you." Just what the
connection was between the going of Christ and
the coming of the Spirit has not been revealed.
We may, however, say that only now could the
Spirit have such truth about Christ, to work from
and with, as seems to be needed. The facts
about him seem to be the great organon or in
strumentality of salvation. Spiritual influence is
thereby so increased as to become practically a
new influence. The Spirit's preaching could now
come home as never before. The person and
work, the resurrection and reign of Christ, when
taught by the Spirit, would work so efficiently,
produce so many and great results, that observant
men of God would speak of the Spirit " poured
out," of "the latter-day glory." Now all the
disciples at Pentecost were baptized with the
Holy Ghost ; now the three thousand who gladly
received Peter's word about Christ; now Corne
lius and his Gentile company ; now the disciples
whom Paul met at Ephesus; now Stephen and
Barnabas and all — Jews, Samaritans, and heathen.
Paul says in i Corinthians : " For in one Spirit
were we all baptized." The indwelling was the
one great experience. The ages since have wit
nessed a powerful manifestation of this life within
the life of man.
This great fact of the faith is at the foundation ;
is the root of the tree of life, with all its fruits —

CONCLUSION 3 1 3
duties, privileges ; but is itself life, and not merely
one or another blessing of life, passing or lasting
appearance of life, but everything of life; the
spring and all that flows from it. It is what you
are, rather than what you do, that is to be sought
after. It is life rather than this or that fruit of
life. Life is not mere existence, the keeping
soul and body together, the mere continuing or
perfecting of one's nature. It is life in the Bible
sense, in the Lord's sense : an outgoing life — such
life as God has, such life as his Spirit gives ; life
given to the worthiest ends; life given to God,
and filled with all the blessing of God. So great,
so rich, so full is our humanity in him ; so contin
ually comes this enriching from on high : when
we sit with folded arms in weakness; when we
creep or walk or run. The Spirit is the air we
breathe. No bounds or walls can keep him out.
We take him in by ways more than ordinary, by
senses more than five. It is a large measure
which he has who enters into God and lives in
the presence of the Lord.
It is this teaching that I have in this book tried
to understand and appreciate. This is the true
philosophy of life, the natural and deepest source
of life, the solution of " the whole world's prob
lem how to carry the burden of life " : to be as
Christ was ; to think and receive as he did ; to go
forward along the line on which he went forward.

314 THE DIVINE INDWELLING
He says, " Learn of me." Most of all did he
live with the Father. How close, too, in Jesus
the divine and human are ! Turn to him and see
the chief One in whom is the divine indwelling.
Witness his emancipation and consolation, his
consecration and service, his joy and peace.
The Lord represents and gathers up in himself
all men. He is the Son of man, and the organic
head of redeemed humanity. When he took our
nature he, with the rest, took our relations to the
Holy Spirit. He received the Spirit as we do.
His is the mold, the pattern, the form. He is
man at his highest ; man in great experiences,
great communings, great entrances into the secret
place of the divine presence. His is no other
than our own humanity — no strange, unnatural
manhood, but man as God thought him, man as
the other world perfects him ; the type and stan
dard ; a man to whose face no earth])? face fully
corresponds, but to the strength and beauty of
which many a human face is growing. There is
power to receive the same divine life he had — our
lives to be like his, though only as the dewdrop
to the ocean that goes round the globe. Let
God enter and you have this never-failing, never-
dying life. Put yourself where Christ can find
you and you can feel his power. It is for you
he is forever seeking. Try yourself to find him,
for only thus will you be found of him.

CONCLUSION 3 1 5
We must come to our Lord. Everything be
comes clear in that life which is our perpetual
study and inspiration. Christ in his own person
and life was a manifestation of the reality of the
divine indwelling. He stands as our example.
He who is in Christ has a heart like the Master's —
for the gain of others ; a longing for their life and
liberty and joy ; even the gain of all this crying
world. He who is in Christ has the Christianity
he taught and lived, and shall go as Christ has
gone, and be as Christ has been, even glorified.

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