YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

IN THE SECRET OF HIS PRESENCE

IN THE SECRET
OF HIS PRESENCE

HELPS FOR THE INNER LIFE
WHEN ALONE WITH GOD

BY THE REV.
G. H. KNIGHT
author or "thi master's questions to his Discipr*s'

THIRD EDITION

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON MCMVI

PREFACE
A PART from strictly devotional books, a
large proportion of the practical Christian
literature of the day concerns itself rather with
the outer manifestations of the Christian life
than with its inner experiences. The Christian
as he moves among men is in view, rather than
the Christian as he is alone with God.
Books of this class are invaluable helps to
Christian living, and can hardly be multiplied
too much.
But, along with these, there may be some
room for books of another class, books dealing
specially with the inner soul-experiences which
vitalise the life that is seen.
This volume is meant to be of such a kind :
to set forth in some degree the sacred privilege

vi PREFACE
of secret fellowship with God, and to urge the
need of making that intercourse with Him more
frequent and more prolonged.
If it helps any reader of it to realise more
fully the joy to be found in the secret place
of meditation and prayer, its purpose will be
fulfilled.
Garelochhead, 1905.

CONTENTS I

PAGH
THE NEED OF BEING OFTEN ALONE WITH GOD . 3

II
ALL DOOBS THAT OPEN EARTHWARDS MUST BE SHUT
WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD . . 13

III
CHRIST WILL VISIT US WHEN WE PBEPAEE TO BE
ALONE WITH HIM. . . . .23

IV
THE GREAT DIVINE EXAMPLE OF BEING MUCH ALONE
WITH GOD . . . . .33

viii CONTENTS V PAOB
WE BEACH A MOUNTAIN-TOP OF VISION WHEN ALONE
WITH GOD . . . . ,45

VI
WE ESTIMATE OURSELVES ARIGHT ONLY WHEN
ALONE WITH GOD . , , .55

VII
OUB PERFECT FREEDOM OF CONFESSION WHEN
ALONE WITH GOD . . . .67

VIII
THE COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY FELT WHEN
WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD . . .77

IX
THE BLESSEDNESS OF A BBOEEN AND CONTRITE
HEART BEALISED WHEN WE ABE ALONE WITH
GOD . . ' . .89

CONTENTS ix

X PAGE
A BURDENED CONSCIENCE SOONEST GETS BELIEF
WHEN ALONE WITH GOD .... 101

XI
THE TEOUBLED HEABT COMES QUICKLY TO QUIET
BEST WHEN ALONE WITH GOD . . . 113

XII
WE EISE INTO FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
WHEN ALONE WITH GOD .... 125

XIII
WE CAN HEAB MOST DISTINCTLY THE WITNESS OF
THE SPIRIT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD . . 137

XIV
WE CAN BEST RENEW OUB STBENGTH BY BEING
MUCH ALONE WITH GOD .... 149

CONTENTS

XV
PAGE
WE ABE LIFTED EASILY ABOVE LIFE'S DISCOUBAGE-
MENTS WHEN ALONE WITH GOD . . . 161

XVI
WE DISCOVEB THE SOURCE OF ALL POWEB
FOB SERVICE WHEN WE ABE ALONE WITH
GOD ...... 175
XVII
OUB HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS ARE INTENSIFIED WHEN
WE ABE ALONE WITH GOD . . . 187

XVIII
THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST WHEN WE ABE
ALONE WITH GOD .... 197

XIX
ALL SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED WHEN WE
ABE ALONE WITH GOD . . . 209

CONTENTS xi
XX
PAGE
WE KNOW THE JOY OF PEEFECT SELF-SUBEENDEB
WHEN WE ABE ALONE WITH GOD . . 221

THE NEED OF BEING MUCH ALONE
WITH GOD

" By all means use some time to be alone ;
Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear."
George Herbert.
" When first thine eyes unveil, give thy soul leave
To do the like: our bodies but fore-run
The spirit's duty. True hearts spread and heave
Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun.
Give Him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep
Him company all day, and in Him sleep." Henry Vaughan.
" Be still, my soul, be still 1
Something that ear hath never heard,
Something unknown to any song of bird,
Something unborne by wind, or wave, or star
A message from the Fatherland afar
Cpmes to thee, if thou art but still." Anon.

THE NEED OF BEING MUCH ALONE
WITH GOD
TTAS secret communion with God come to
be one of the lost arts of the Church ?
Can it be the case, as it is often said to be,
that comparatively few who name the Christian
name, spend more than five minutes of each
day alone with God? If so, the weakness, and
worldliness, and unfruitfulness of the professing
Church are explained at once. Our forefathers
knew far more than we do of prolonged com
munion with God in the secret place ; and there
was a depth in their religion gained, thereby
which is greatly lacking now. No doubt their
spiritual life was in some sense narrower than
ours. It was more self-centred than was good
s

i ALONE WITH GOD
for them. But with the widening of the
stream, there has come a shallowing of it too;
and if there is one call more imperative than
another for every Christian ear to hear, it is
the call "back to prayer: not less work, but
more communion ; not less activity in Christian
effort, but more secret fellowship with God."
We live in a busy age. Life goes on at high
pressure. From early morning till late evening
the bewildering whirl of the world's machinery
never stops. Both body and brain are exposed
to incessant wear and tear. The necessary
business of life seems to claim larger time
than ever ; and the passion for amusement
which is so characteristic of the age comes
in to seize upon whatever time is left by
graver things; so that, between business on
the one side and amusement on the other,
leisure for prayer is well-nigh crushed out.
That is an atmosphere in which no Christian
can possibly thrive.
But even really earnest men, men who are
not living for the world or for themselves, but
for God, men whose energies are consecrated,

ALONE WITH GOD 5
whose days are spent in sacred devotion to
Christ, who find their joy in serving Him by
serving men — even they need many a quiet
hour alone with God if their power for ser
vice is to be maintained. When Luther was
in the heat of his great conflict with Rome,
and hour after hour was filled with the
laborious work of preaching, writing, and dis
puting for the truth, he said, "I cannot get
on without three hours of prayer every day."
Even for the more secular work that lies to
the hand of most of us, much prayer is
needed if our wisdom and our strength for
that work are not to fail. That noble Christian
soldier, Havelock, when overwhelmed with the
strenuous labours that had to be gone through
during the terrible months of the Indian
Mutiny, so felt the absolute need of much
secret prayer that he made it his rule when
he had to march at eight to rise at six, and
when he had to march at six to rise at four,
in order to ensure for himself at least one
morning hour of undisturbed communion with
God before the pressure of the day's duties

6 ALONE WITH GOD
began. The same thing was seen in Living
stone when pioneering for Christ in Central
Africa, His private journals show how very
near to God he lived, and how his strength
was gained by dwelling much in "the secret
place of the Most High."
It was a distorted apprehension of this great
truth that led so many in former days to
retire from the world altogether, and live as
hermits in the seclusion of mountain caves.
It was not always to escape the persecutor's
sword, neither was it always to get away
from the horrible corruptions of society into
a purer moral atmosphere. It was often just
to have more undistracted fellowship with
God and larger leisure for meditation upon
things divine. The method was a mistaken
one and seldom served its end, but the aim
was good.
The whole tendency of modern days, how
ever, is to go to the opposite extreme, and
make religion almost entirely a social thing.
The dominant note of the Christian life
amongst ourselvee is the social one. The

ALONE WITH GOD 7
great difficulty in earlier times used to be to
get ni3n to be earnest enough to go into the
world and sanctify it. Now the difficulty is to
get TShem to be earnest enough to go away
from the world and sanctify themselves. The
religious life is identified with public gatherings,
united worship, and an incessant round of
activities in social Christian work ; and it
tends, on that very account, to be greatly
unfamiliar with secret prayer, and private fel
lowship with God. There is unquestionably a
danger in this, for ceaseless activity for others
may weaken the spiritual life within ourselves,
and force from us ere long the sad confession,
" I have kept the vineyards of others, but mine
own vineyard I have not kept." For stirring
great enthusiasms we need the inspiration of
the crowd; Christ's Gospel has always won its
noblest triumphs in social revivals : but for
the deepening and confirming of holy prin
ciples within us we need the seclusion of the
"secret place." The trees in a forest grow
tall but thin. They shoot up quickly through
mutual support; but take away from any of

8 ALONE WITH GOD
them the shelter of its neighbouring trees, and,
at the first blast of a hurricane it will fall. It
is not there, but on some bare hillside where
it has long battled with every wind that
you must look for the tree that no storm can
dislodge, that will outlast the shock of a
hundred winter gales.
It can be no otherwise with ourselves. We
may be planted in the kingdom with a mul
titude, but only in secret, lonely, personal
fellowship with God can we really grow into
the strength of "trees of righteousness" for
Him. What we need above all things in these
crowded days is the setting apart of many
listening times ; times of quiet in which we
can hear the heavenly voices that call to us
unregarded in the busy day. The great clock-
bell of St. Paul's is not heard even a few
streets off in the roar of traffic all day long ;
but it can be heard over half the metropolis
in the silence of the night. One reason why
God so often spoke to His servants in the
night was that all was quiet then. That, too,

ALONE WITH GOD 9
was one reason why so many of them were
sent away into desert solitudes that they
might hear what He had to say. It may be
one reason why sickness and sorrow are sent
so frequently into our careless lives. God has
something to say to us which, in the whirl of
our earthly ambitions, we cannot hear: and
He makes the noises of the outer world to
cease that He may speak to the soul. Some
times He " tries vis in the night," sometimes
He "giveth songs in the night," sometimes
He "instructs us in the night," sometimes He
gives us " a vision in the night " : but all of
these we will utterly miss if there is no quiet
time in which He can come very near to us,
and we can come very near to Him. There
are many ways of preparing to receive blessing
from on high ; but one of the most essential
is this, "Commune with your own heart, and
be still."

ALL DOORS THAT OPEN EARTHWARD
MUST BE SHUT WHEN WE ARE
ALONE WITH GOD

" Serve God before the world: let Him not go
Until thou hast a blessing; then resign
The whole unto Him, and remember who
Prevailed by wrestling ere the sun did shine.
Bise to prevent the day. Sleep doth sins glut,
And heaven's door opens when the world's is shut."
Henry Vaughan.
" Sum up at night what thou hast done by day ;
Dress and undress thy soul, mark the decay
And growth of it: if, with thy watch, that too
Be down, then wind up both. Since we shall be
Most surely judged, make thy accounts agree."
George Herbert.

II

ALL DOORS THAT OPEN EARTHWARD
MUST BE SHUT WHEN WE ARE
ALONE WITH GOD
" r I lHE doors being shut." There is more in
this simple phrase than meets the eye.
It tells how the Risen One suddenly stood in
the midst of His disciples in the fast-closed
upper room on the evening of the Resurrection
day, and, in so far, it is the record of a miracle.
But it also contains a fine suggestion of a great
spiritual truth; and it is noteworthy that it
is to John, the most spiritual of the Evan
gelists, that we are indebted for our knowledge
of the fact. The other Evangelists say only
that the disciples were gathered in an upper
room ; but John adds the significant remark
13

U THE DOORS BEING SHUT
that "the doors were shut for fear of the
Jews." They were not merely a secluded but
a trembling company. Do what they could,
try to believe as they might, they could not
rise into the joy of the Resurrection. But the
Risen One Himself came noiselessly and mys
teriously into their midst with His words of
peace. The same divine Lord who had come
out of the grave in spite of the sealed stone,
came into the upper room in spite of the
closed doors, for no earthly barriers could
hinder the perfect freedom of His glorified
Resurrection life ; and His greeting to them
brought a gladness with it they had never
known before.
But do not all His best visits to the soul
take place only when, in a true, deep sense,
the doors are shut? We need shut doors for
our holiest intercourse with Him. He needs
shut doors for His most comforting messages
to us. The "still small voice" can be heard
distinctly only when the noise of the world's
voices is shut out, and we are as in a "secret
place of the Most High." Was it not on this

THE DOORS BEING SHUT 15
very account that the Lord, when giving a rule
for prayer-intercourse with God, laid such em
phasis on the seclusion and privacy of it?
"Enter into thy chamber, and when thou hast
shut the door, pray to thy Father who seeth
in secret." " Let there be no ostentation in
your praying," He says ; but He means more
than that, "let there be no hurry either, and
no distraction of soul; have a quiet place and
a quiet time for prayer, but above all have a
quiet heart."
No doubt there may be very sweet moments
of prayer where there is no secret chamber
with shut door, and no outward quiet either.
Nehemiah could lift up his heart in prayer and
get an immediate answer too, even while
standing as cupbearer before the king, and
carrying on a conversation with him all the
time. So may the busiest of busy men in the
very midst of their engrossing work, or when
walking the crowded street — the tradesman
amid the duties of shop or mill — hard-working
mothers amid all the distractions of their
children's cries — the traveller amid the noisy

16 THE DOORS BEING SHUT
jolting of the railway train — all practise the
art of sending glances and petitions upwards
to the Throne on high, and know the comfort
of getting immediate answers back that will
make them calmer, wiser, braver than they
were before. How strengthening such way
side prayers may be none know till they have
practised them. But if we are to know the
full joy of intercourse with God, we must make
definite room for it outside of the busy current
of life, and set apart for it conscientiously
some quiet time, even though that should
need to be stolen from the morning slumber
or the evening rest.
"Shut thy chamber-door," said Jesus when
rebuking ostentation in prayer ; and a literal
obedience to that command may often be
needed even yet : for the ostentation of the
Pharisee who prayed at the corners of the
street "to be seen of men " may be imitated
to-day by those who pray in their own
chambers, but leave open the chamber-door
on the chance that some one may come in
and find them on their knees, and think what

THE DOORS BEING SHUT 17
good Christians they are — thus making a real
parade of their devotion even while professing
to conceal it! But the Lord's command goes
farther than this. "Shut the door of thy
heart," He says, for the heart-door may be
left open to all the distractions and dis
turbances of earth, even though the room-door
is closed. Many a Christian knows, from sad
experience, that this is so. He is never so
haunted by worldly cares and frivolous
thoughts as when bending the knee in secret
prayer. Not only the worries but the veriest
vanities of life come crowding in just when
he would seek to be alone with God. " Shut
thy heart's door" therefore, and keep the world
out. A wind-tossed lake gives no reflection of
the sky. We need to arrest all worldly things
that would claim admission to the soul, and
say to them as Abraham said to his servants
at the foot of Mount Moriah, "Abide ye here
while I go yonder to worship." " Shut the door
of the heart," and keep unbelief out. Do not
allow the secret misgiving that your prayers
will not be of any use. God's answers are

18 THE DOORS BEING SHUT
given only to a perfect trust. " Shut the
door of thy heart," and keep formality out.
Mechanical devotion does no man any good.
To pray just to satisfy conscience because the
set time for prayer has come and we must
get through with the duty, is not only an
attempt to impose upon God, it is practising
a tremendous deceit upon ourselves. " Shut
the door of thy heart," and keep impenitence
out, for the heart may be really clinging to
the very sin the lips are praying against.
The only prayer that tells with God is the
prayer that is absolutely guileless and sincere.
"If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord
will not hear me." "Shut the door of thy
heart," and keep self-will out. To ask God to
ratify our own foregone determinations, or to
fall in with our own desires, is not to pray
i but to dictate to Him. The undertone of
every prayer must be, "not my will, but
Thine be done." It may seem as if this must
greatly limit the range of prayer, and even
rob it of its charm as a practical help in life;
but if we ask, and receive through asking, all

THE DOORS BEING SHUT 19
it is His loving will to give, can we either
wish or get a larger blessing than that?
There is thus to be a great shutting out, as
well as a shutting in ; but when the heart-door
is firmly closed against all disturbances such
as these, prayer-fellowship with the Lord will
be one of our intensest joys : for the old ex
perience of the Resurrection evening will be
repeated again and again, "then came Jesus,
the doors being shut, and said, Peace be unto
you."

CHRIST WILL VISIT US WHEN WE
PREPARE TO BE ALONE WITH HIM

" 0 Saviour I who, from earth's conflicting voices,
Art calling me to Thy seclusion sweet ;
Give me a heart that, still and calm, rejoices
To sit, with Mary, at Thy blessed feet.
For marvels of this secret place are known
To him who in it dwells with Thee, alone."
Tbrsteegbn.

Ill

CHRIST WILL VISIT US WHEN WE
PREPARE TO BE ALONE WITH HIM
TTE often comes to us unsought, and un-
-* — ¦- invited, surprising us with some word
of peace when we are not expecting it. Even
in the busiest moments of the day, in the
throng and rush of troubling cares, He some
times sends messages to the heart that are
gladly recognised as His, and do much to
sustain and cheer us. But is it not true of
this Heavenly Friend, as it is true of many
an earthly one, that He likes to be asked to
visit us, and will sometimes wait for an invi
tation before He comes. If we want His
presence with us, do we not need to prepare
for receiving Him ? Our hearts are often very

24 HEAVENLY VISITS
Bethlehems ; there is a great crowd, and " No
room for Him in the inn " : and He may some
times, therefore, say in regard to His coming
into the heart, "But withal prepare Me a
lodging." The goodness which He has pre
pared for us He gives us only when He finds
us preparing to receive it ; and there is no place
for that like the place of secret prayer.
But can any man really eocpect such visits
from the Lord? Assuredly, if His own words
are true, "If a man love Me ... I will love
him, and will manifest Myself to him," "and
My Father will love him, and we will come
unto him and make our abode with him."
On reading such words we might well be
overwhelmed with surprise — the promise seems
too great to be ever fulfilled ! But very beau
tifully does the Lord lead up to His marvellous
conclusion. First, He says, " I will love him " :
but that might be only silent love, love really
felt but unconfessed, and that would not satisfy
us — nor does it satisfy Himself. For next, He
says, "I will mamfest, Myself to Him." Still,
even that might be only at a distance, or

HEAVENLY VISITS 25
through the medium of something else. So
He adds, " We will come to him " ; and even

that is not all, " We will make our abode with
him." That is not simply coming near, it is
coming in; not only coming to visit, but
coming to stay.
Now, do we ever think what it would be to
have such a promise fulfilled to us in a literal
and outward way ; what it would mean to us
if He should even for one day return to earth,
and, in the same way as He used to frequent
some earthly homes of old, should abide in
ours? What would it be to have the Lord
Jesus spending even one day beneath our roof,
or talking to us even for one evening in the
quiet family circle, consenting to be treated as
our guest?
Does the thought ever occur to us, " What
a home mine would be, if Christ were actually
dwelling in it for a single week, going out
and in, interesting Himself in all my concerns,
sympathising both with my sorrows and with
my joys, speaking to me of how I am living
my life in the world here, directing me in all my

26 HEAVENLY VISITS
difficulties, speaking to me, too, of things trans
cending this poor life altogether, telling me of
the heavenly life for which He is preparing
me, and bidding me be of good cheer I What
an atmosphere of heaven would pervade that
home of mine ! What holy strength would
come to me from that Divine companionship !
What virtue would go out from Him to me !
What peace His presence there would bring,
and what holiness too ! How heavenly-minded
I would become I How radiant with a reflec
tion of His sanctity ! What a complete arrest
His presence there would put upon every kind
of sin ! What a hushing there would be of all
those tones of anger, irritation, selfishness,
uncharitableness, that are so often heard from
my lips ! That home of mine would be, for the
time, a miniature of heaven."
Do we ever think of all this? Then how
wonderful the thought that something even
better than all this would be is actually
promised by Himself to all that "love Him"!
and that better thing is to have Him in all
the graciousness and power of His own glorious

HEAVENLY VISITS 27
life, not merely an outward Visitant but an
inward Resident, a Guest not merely in the
home, but in the soul itself.
Did not Paul understand this well when
he prayed for the Ephesians " that Christ
might dwell in their hearts by faith"? This
is much more than merely " thinking about
Christ," more than " imitating Christ," more
than "following Christ," more than hanging
up the portrait of Christ and looking at it.
We hang some portrait of an absent one who
is dear upon the wall of our room. Friends
see it, and say, " What a speaking likeness
that is ! " We know what they mean, but we
say to ourselves, " Alas ! no, that is just what
it cannot do — it cannot talk to me, it cannot
advise me, it cannot comfort me : oh that
these lips had language," but they are silent
lips, the picture is a beautiful reminiscence,
but that is all.
What Paul meant was not that we should
just have our Christ in the Bible, like a por
trait hung up before our eyes, but that we
should have Christ in the heart, like a Friend

28 HEAVENLY VISITS
whose living presence is in the home, a Friend
accessible as counsellor and comforter every
moment, a Friend to whom every doubt or
sorrow or care can be freely opened out, and
who will always speak to us His words of
wisdom and of love.
"Master, where dwellest Thou?" said the
first two disciples as they followed Jesus in
the way. He answered them, " Come and see."
Now, He has no .earthly home except JELis
disciples'hearts ; and yet there are some of
these hearts that have Him so constantly
within them that if the same question were
asked Him to-day, He might take the ques
tioner round to one after another of these
disciples and say, "Come here and see."
Would that all disciples were such as these!
How is it that we know so little of this blessed
and intimate companionship with Christ?
Simply because we so easily open the heart
to all intruders, that "there is no room in
the inn," and the Holy Christ goes away.
Soon, perhaps, in penitence and shame we
awake to our folly in thus banishing our

HEAVENLY VISITS 29
Lord: we drive the intruders out, and cry to
Him to return. He does return ; but very
speedily some fresh indignity put upon Him
banishes Him again ! And so the days go on,
and the weeks too. He is never allowed
thoroughly to occupy the place within us
which we invite Him to fill ; and His flying
visits do not leave behind them any permanent
fruit of holiness or of peace : He does not find
the heart prepared for His coming, and does not
get such a welcome as will induce Him to stay.
The leading idea of preparation for receiving
a guest is anticipatory thoughtfulness, a con
sideration of what would please him when he
comes. We fill his room with many small
tokens of our wish that, in it, he should really
feel at home. Do we ever so anticipate a visit
from our Lord, and make the heart-room
ready for Him before He comes ? Do we ever
feel as Moses felt when he said, "He is my
God and I will prepare Him a habitation"?
Perhaps we do: but even then we are con
fronted with two great obstacles — first, our
conscious unworthiness to receive the Lord at

30 HEAVENLY VISITS
all, and next, our felt incompetence so to purify
the house that it shall be worthy to receive
Him. We are therefore forced to take refuge
in the paradox, that the Lord Himself must do
in us what He asks us to do and what we are
unable to do. We are to cleanse the heart for
Christ to dwell in it, and yet it is just His
own coming into it that alone can cleanse it
thoroughly. If He comes to us at all Ho must
come to us, unworthy of His presence as we
are ; and then what our own power cannot
do, His power working in us will speedily do.
Our prayer must therefore be, "Lord, take
my heart and cleanse it, for I cannot cleanse
it myself ; keep it Thyself, for I cannot keep it
for Thee." And He will answer the prayer.
He will bring these poor sinful hearts of ours
into such close fellowship with Himself that
His holy nature will be transfused into ours ;
moment by moment we shall become larger
sharers in His victory and His peace : and the
hearts in which He dwells will become living
temples, full of " thanksgiving and the voice of
melody."

THE GREAT DIVINE EXAMPLE OF
BEING MUCH ALONE WITH GOD

1 Sweet is the hour of secret prayer,
Sweet, with the hush of falling eve
To bend the knee with reverent air,
And words to the Unseen to weave.
How burns the fragrant incense poured
In quiet haunts at close of day
From loving hearts that, like their Lord,
Steal from the world to pause and pray ! "
C. L. Ford.

IV

THE GREAT DIVINE EXAMPLE OF
BEING MUCH ALONE WITH GOD
r I iHERE had been a great festal gathering
T^ in Jerusalem. Multitudes had come to it
from all parts of the land ; and Jesus had come
to it from Galilee. It was almost over. The
Temple courts were emptying. The crowds
that had been living for a week past in booths
on the house-roofs were all dispersing to their
homes, and the lonely Stranger whose voice
had thrilled so many, and startled some, and
angered others, had also to go away, for
nowhere in all that city had a resting-place
been provided for Him. "Every man went
to his own home : Jesus went to the Mount
of Olives."
How full of pathos these few simple words !
4 S3

34 CHRIST IN PRAYER
We picture Him slowly, silently wending His
way through the crowd as the evening
shadows fall, and overhearing, as He goes,
remarks passing from lip to lip about Him
— some of them appreciative and kind, some
indifferent, some contemptuous, and some full
of hate. We see the crowd slowly thinning
as street after street is passed ; one door after
another openmg to receive the inmates of
the various homes ; we think of the com
panies reassembling within them for the
evening meal and interchange of talk: and
then we think of that lonely Stranger still
passing on, no friendly door opened for Him,
no voice of welcome inviting Him — passing on
and out by the city gate, and up the long
slope of the olive-shaded hill to find His
resting-place beneath the stars.
The homeless Man of Sorrows had no private
prayer-chamber whose door He might shut to
talk with God. No man offered Him a place
where He might lay His head. Well, He would
lay it down beneath His Father's trees, upon
His Father's breast. -

CHRIST IN PRAYER 35
But this was no exceptional thing with
Him. It was His habitual practice all along,
even though some friendly home was willing to
shelter Him. Again and again in the Gospel
story we read such words as these : *' He with
drew Himself into the wilderness and prayed " ;
"Rising up a great while before day, He
departed into a solitary place, and there
prayed"; and what strikes us with surprise is
to find that frequently such a night of solitary
prayer came in between two days each of
which was so filled with labours of love for
others that He had scarce one hour in them
to call His own, and "no leisure so much as
to eat."
Twoverysignificant facts, when brought into
connection with this, throw a wonderful light
upon these secret hours of His.
One of these facts is that He was never
for one moment of any _day_out _of touch_with
God. We are constantly getting out of touch
with God. The business and the cares of the
world together eome sadly in between us and
God, ¦ and we need quiet seasons of retirement

36 CHRIST IN PRAYER
to bring us into touch with Him again. But
Jesus always lived in the closest fellowship
with the Father. He could speak of Himself as
the "Son of Man who is in heaven." He was
speaking and listening to the Father all day
long, and yet He who was in such constant
touch with God felt the need, as well as the
joy, of more prolonged and more quiet com
munion with Him.
The other fact is, that most of the reasons
that drive us to prayer could never have
driven Him. He had no sins to confess, no
mistakes to regret, no pardons to seek, no
defeats in a struggle with inborn corruption
to lament, no infirmities of temper to deplore,
not even a momentary forgetfulness of His
Father's will to repent of at His feet. Indeed,
we owe our salvation to the fact that, living in
our own nature, in the midst of our own temp
tations, He alone of men could pray without
repentanoe, without the confession of a single
sin, without either needing forgiveness or
asking to be forgiven.
And yet He needed j>rjayer. He loved it, but

CHRIST IN PRAYER 37
He needed it too ; needed_jtLjugt^as we need it
our_selves^_iioJLonlyL to_jrefresh His soul after
the disappointments of^ the day, but to nerve
it for fresh labours sure to involve fresh pain
on the day that was coming.
In a natural fear of lowering the Divine
dignity of Christ we often forget His true
humanity. We think of His earthly life as
moving on a plane so different from ours
that no parallel can be drawn between them.
We find it difficult to think of Him as feeling
in the various experiences of life anything like
what we feel in the same ; and if any striking
instance of superiority in Him to our customary
weaknesses presents itself, we account for it by
referring it to His Divine nature; and having
accounted for it thus, we give up all idea of
attempting to resemble Him. What we forget
is that He Jgo^needed to walk by faith, needed
to be filledwith the Holy Spjrik_asedfid to be
lifted above natural discouragements, needed
the~sympathy of loving friends, needed the
strengthening that is gained in private prayer.
His strong and beautiful, serene and holy life

38 CHRIST IN PRAYER
so fills the eye, that we lose sight of His
secret intercourse with the Father, out of which
came all its beauty and all its power.
^1°r they were no mere formal acts, these
prayers of His. He was not just giving His
countenance to a pious practice needed by us,
but not needed by Himself. They_were_reaZ
prayers. If they were not so, if they did not
spring out of a real feeling of need, if they
were not prayers of dependence and of faith,
they could be no examples to us. They would
even have been misleading examples, teaching
that the value of prayer consists merely in
the length of time consumed by it. But He
was really praying, and not apparently only,
when alone with the Father. He prayed for
others, but He prayed also for Himself ; for
He was not half human and half Divine, but
wholly human though wholly Divine, com
passed with all our human infirmities, and
subject to our weaknesses as well ; and there
fore He needed prayer, needed it to strengthen
Him, and needed it to keep Him calm.
Even to "the Lord of Glory" prayer was

CHRIST IN PRAYER 39
as the vital breath. He lived in the atmo
sphere of prayer from first to last ; and
when any specially important work had to be
done, any specially difficult crisis had to be
faced, any specially trying experience had to
be endured, He met it by special prayer.
At His baptism He prayed. At the choos
ing of the twelve Apostles He prayed. Before
doing many of His mighty works He prayed,
and He prayed also after they were done. At
His transfiguration He prayed. It came to
Him in the very act of prayer. At the grave
of Lazarus He prayed. When the popular
enthusiasm was eager to make Him a worldly
King He prayed. He prayed when the
enthusiasm cooled, and rejection came. With
prayer He entered on the day of His last
sufferings. With prayer He agonised in dark
Gethsemane. With prayer He cast His mur
derers upon the mercy He knew to be in the
Father's heart. With prayer He looked up for
support in the darkness of desertion on the
Cross. In prayer He breathed out His Spirit
into the Father's hands. If He needed prayer

40 CHRIST IN PRAYER
so constant, so filial, so dependent as this,
how infinitely more do we !
There are mysteries in prayer that we cannot
solve : but even though it were a greater
mystery than it is, how the prayer of man can
affect the heart and hand of God, how He who
governs the universe by strict laws can interpose
to help His children who are enveloped in these
laws, we can face it calmly as we look upon
the Man Christ Jesus pouring out His soul
in " strong crying and tears." It answers a
thousand difficulties just to see the Saviour
on His knees — for He knew all the laws of
the universe better than the wisest philosopher
can do, and He would not have cried to God
for help if it is impossible for God to answer
such a cry. Jesus on His knees shows us
that we are not helplessly enclosed in an
iron network of natural laws preventing any
succour in a time of need. Perplexities some
how vanish, and courageous hope comes in,
the moment that we think of Him thus
pleading trustfully with a Father who is in
heaven. Perhaps, after all, the best answer

CHRIST IN PRAYER 41
to the question, " Why should I pray so
much?" is this — "Because Jesus did." He
who was " in all things made like unto His
brethren" would have His brethren in all
things made like to Him. As He was, so
must we be in the world, and, characteristi
cally, men of prayer. The praying Christian
alone is the overcoming Christian, the holy
Christian, the shining Christian, the Christian
whose life is one long service of the Master,
and whose heart is filled with the Master's
joy.

WE REACH A MOUNTAIN-TOP OF VISION
WHEN ALONE WITH GOD

" Master, where abidest Thou ?
We would leave the past behind,
We would scale the mountain's brow,
Learning more Thy heavenly mind.
Canst Thou take our sins away?
May we find repose in Thee ?
From Thy gracious lips to-day
As of old breatheB ' Come and see.' "
The Three Wakings.
"Allured up to the mountain-top, with God alone, apart,
There Spirit meeteth spirit, there speaketh Heart to heart
There God and I — none other; His secret place I find
A home of isolation sweet, all trouble left behind." Tersteegen.

WE REACH A MOUNTAIN-TOP OF VISION
WHEN ALONE WITH GOD
r I THERE seems to be a rich suggestiveness
in the fact that Jesus so often chose
not merely a lonely but a lofty place for His
fellowship with God. He seemed to love the
mountain solitude as a place of prayer. Did
He, the Great Lord, feel as we sometimes do,
the mysterious power of altitude, as well as
solitude, drawing Him nearer to heaven? He
was " in all things made like unto His brethren "
— was this one of them?
Some can remember times when strange and
glad upliftings of soul were felt on the summit
of a lofty hill, where they sat looking out with
hushed eoul upon God's majestic peaks, all

46 THE MOUNTAIN-VISION
glistening white with the purity of untrodden
Alpine snow. They had moments of heavenly,
as well as earthly, vision there; moments in
which they felt so freed from the narrowing
limitations of the ordinary world, and also
from its baffling haze, that the soul seemed to
leap into larger freedom also, and they had
clearer, serener, more entrancing views of God
and of the things above than they ever enjoyed
below. Did ever Jesus feel this elevating and calming
power of mountain solitude upon His perfectly
human soul? We like to think He did. But,
however that may be, His practice does suggest
that what we need for our best fellowship with
God is not solitude only, but height: that the
prayer-chamber should be to us a place where
we can look down upon our daily life as we
would look from a mountain summit on the
plain beneath; that there the noises of our
daily business and anxieties should be hushed ;
and that there we should gain a larger outlook
than is possible lower down.
It is nearly impossible for one who never

THE MOUNTAIN-VISION 47
gets above a level plain to understand his
limitations, or to form a just estimate of his
narrow life ; but, looking down upon it from a
height, he sees things in their right proportions ;
the apparently great are contrasted with the
really great, the things close at hand are
measured by the immensities beyond them.
What he thought of as a great city becomes
a mere speck in the distance ; the mighty river
is only a silver thread ; the towering cathedral
is so dwarfed as to be hardly visible ; what he
used to speak of as his encircling hills are
shorn of the smallest pretension to the name.
And then, too, as these apparent magnitudes
dwindle into insignificance, larger and hitherto
unsuspected magnitudes come into view.
Something like this is gained when, in a
quiet hour of meditation and prayer, we are
lifted above the world in which we ordinarily
move. Many a false estimate is rectified there.
Our ambitions, plans, labours, worries, vexa
tions, sorrows, cares, fall into their true pro
portions. We can measure them and test them
as we there look down upon them, till we

48 THE MOUNTAIN-VISION
come to see them just as they are seen by God
Himself. We sometimes speak of getting from
a mountain-top " a bird's-eye view " of things.
From the mountain-top of secret prayer we get
a " God's-eye view " of everything ; and it is
marvellous how that makes many great things
look small, and small things great; how all
mere worldly ambitions look surprisingly poor,
and heavenly ambitions the only ones worth
having. There is a wonderful reversal of esti
mates there ; but to gain it is worth the climb ;
for, descending the hill, we can carry away with
us the vision of the mountain-top to sanctify all
our feelings when busy with things below.
It is only by going daily in this way above
the world, and looking down upon it, that we
can become really superior to its false attrac
tions, and meet them with nobler ambitions
stirring in the breast, and the light of heaven
shining on the face.
Our Lord and Master's experience may help
us here. It was while He was praying on a
mountain- top that He was suddenly transfigured,
and the glory of heaven so shone out in Him

THE MOUNTAIN-VISION 49
that the three disciples who "were with Him
in the holy mount " were blinded by the lustre
of it. Now the Lord did not go up that moun
tain in order to be transfigured. He went up
to pray. The dark shadow of the coming
Cross was over Him already, and the horror
of it as affecting His disciples made Him seek
some comfort from the Father for them in
prospect of it, as well as for Himself ; and the
glorious Transfiguration was God's answer to
the prayer. And just as it was while praying
that Jesus was instantaneously transfigured,
so it is by prayer that His disciples are gradu
ally transfigured till they also can shine with
the reflected beauty of heaven.
That such an effect should be the outcome
of long-continued faithful fellowship with God
in secret will not seem wonderful if we consider
what true prayer is. It is the direct contact
of the soul with God. In this divine com
panionship we get completely out of contact
with the things below, and stand face to face
with Him near whom none can long be
without catching something of His glory. All

50 THE MOUNTAIN-VISION
prolonged contact with earthly things tends to
make us earthly in feeling and in life. All
really close and prolonged contact with heaven
must tend to make us heaven-like, and, there
fore, God-like too.
The very countenance of a man of much
prayer will often bear witness to his acquainted-
ness with the mountain-height. It will show a
softened spiritual beauty that in his prayerless
days it never had. But whether the face bears
witness to the mountain-top or not, the whole
life and character wilL There is sure to be
seen in his whole tone an elevation of feeling
showing clearly that he is accustomed to be
often very near to God: and thus his high
fellowship with God will bring about a high
life before men. If any Christian finds that
his soul is not sufficiently raised above the
down-dragging influence of earthly things,
and his life not transformed, gradually but
surely, into the beauty of holiness, it is only
because he does not often enough climb the
hill of secret communion with God, nor linger
long enough there to catch its heavenly glow.

THE MOUNTAIN-VISION 51
We need to be much in the company of God
if we are to understand God, to sympathise
with God, to feel as God feels, to resemble
God. Two human hearts that are constantly
together, dwelling in the same house, sharing
the same table, talking with each other, finding
each other's presence a daily joy, get in time
wonderfully to resemble each other in all their
habits of life, in their way of looking at life,
in all their feelings about life, even in the very
tones of the voice. It is this kind of intimacy
with God that we need to cultivate ; an intimacy
that will enable us to understand God in all the
ways of His Divine love, and will prevent us
from misunderstanding Him when His love is
a little concealed ; an intimacy that will
gradually make us resemble God too, lifting
us into a region purer and loftier than other
men know anything of.
" When one that holds communion with the skies,
Has filled his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with earth's meaner things ;
'Tis even as if an angel shook his wings:
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
And tells us whence his treasures are supplied."

52 THE MOUNTAIN-VISION
We must go upward as well as onward in
our acquaintance with God, and linger long
amid the glories of the mountain vision, if we
are to come forth radiant from the secret
place, and be shining witnesses to a shining
Lord.

WE ESTIMATE OURSELVES ARIGHT
ONLY WHEN ALONE WITH GOD

" Search me, 0 God ! my actions try,
And let my life appear
As seen by Thine all-searching eye, —
To mine my ways make clear.
Search all my thoughts, the secret springs,
The motives that control ;
The chambers where polluted things
Hold empire o'er the soul.
Search till Thy fiery glance has cast
Its holy light through all,
And I by grace am brought at last
Before Thy face to fall." Bev. F. Bottoms.

VI

WE ESTIMATE OURSELVES ARIGHT
ONLY WHEN ALONE WITH GOD
T)EFORE I can have any joy in being alone
-^~^ with God I must have learned not to
fear being alone with myself. If my heart is
not right with God I cannot possibly delight
in fellowship with Him ; and I cannot be right
with Him until I am right with myself. My
shrinking from close companionship with Him
in the secret place may be due to the fact
that I am indifferent to His presence, and do
not care to speak to Him or to hear Him speak
to me ; but it may sometimes be due to
another fact — that I am afraid of God, and
therefore afraid to see myself as I appear to
65

56 RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES
Him ; afraid to give my conscience the chance
of speaking to me more loudly than I like ;
afraid to look very narrowly into myself, lest
I should make discoveries too destructive of
my self-esteem, disconcerting me by tearing
away every shred of that good opinion of
myself in which I have been living content
edly for long ; afraid, that is, to see myself
as God sees me, and as I really am.
This shrinking from any deep self-scrutiny
is by no means an uncommon thing, and
often goes far to explain the feverish restless
ness with which a world-loving heart plunges
into a perpetual round of gaieties and dissipa
tions. It is not always that any great satis
faction is found in these things, but they
serve as an escape from troublesome questions
about the soul, and help to get rid of the
clamours of conscience that would be unbear
able if any quiet hour were left in which its
accusing voice might be listened to.
But something must be terribly wrong with
any man who is afraid to be alone with him
self. Humbling and saddening the disooreries

RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES 57
then made may be, but to face them honestly
is the only way to life and peace. Every one
who " comes home to God " must first, like the
prodigal, " come to himself " ; and there is no
place like the chamber of quiet thought and
prayer for that.
Job learned it there. It was when all other
voices were hushed, and God's voice alone was
heard, that he came to see his sinfulness and
feel it so acutely that he cried, " Behold, O
Lord, I am vile, and what shall I answer
Thee ? " Largely upright though he had been,
a man of blameless life, "fearing God and
eschewing evil," he had never before sounded
the depths of his sinfulness. The unjust sus
picions and accusations of his three friends
only helped him to justify himself and blinded
him to the real truth. But when face to face
with God all illusions vanished, and he said,
"I repent in dust and ashes."
It was when alone with God that Isaiah
learned to feel in the same way. Sitting
apart from all, he had a wonderful vision of
the Seraphim in the Holy Plaoe and heard the

58 RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES
music of their praise ; and then there flashed
into him the thought of the contrast between
himself and them, and he could only cry,
" Woe is me ! for I am undone ; I am a man
of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of hosts." We might have
expected to hear him say, "Blessed are mine
eyes, for they have seen the King, the Lord
of hosts," but we hear only an exclamation of
intensest self-condemnation and shame. He
saw the Seraphim bathed in the holiness they
were singing of, and there flashed upon him
the humbling thought of his own unlikeness
to them. " How could I stand beside these
holy ones? how could I sing in that heavenly
choir, even though a golden harp were given
me? Heaven so pure and my own heart so
unclean, woe is me ! I am farther off from
God than I supposed myself to be ! "
Isaiah was a true man of God, a sanctified
man, a greatly sanctified man, perhaps the
holiest man then living on the earth ; and yet
one glimpse of God in the secret place gave
him such a glimpse of himself as made him

RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES 59
fall down in deepest penitence and shame
before the thrice-Holy One.
There is nothing like this coming face to
face with God in secret for stripping off all
the common conventional disguises of our sins
and showing us the naked truth. When the
light of heaven is there let into the dark
corners of the soul, there come astonishing
discoveries of sins that the darkness had
concealed. Sitting on a bright summer day among the
stones half-hidden by the grass and heather
of some warm hillside, admiring one of them
gay with the colours of lichen and moss, and
listening to the joyous song of some happy
bird that has perched upon it, we seem to be
looking on a perfect picture of purity and
peace, till some sudden impulse makes us over
turn the stone to see what is beneath. And
then, what a revulsion of feeling ! A whole
colony of loathsome, wriggling creatures, dis
turbed by the light, are rushing hither and
thither, burrowing out of sight into congenial
darkness again ! So will the light of God,

60 RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES
when suddenly let in upon what lies beneath
the fair exterior of life, reveal in one moment
a multitude of sins that were never suspected
to be there.
Not worldly men alone but even the best
of Christians find this to be true. The
saintliest are always Jhe humblest. Growth
in holiness can be measured by the acuteness
of the consciousness of remaining sinfulness.
The more our prayers for enlightenment are
answered, the more our deep sinfulness comes
into view. Was not this exemplified in the
experience of that saintly man, the Apostle
Paul? In the year 59, writing to the Corin
thians, he calls himself " the least of the
Apostles." Five_ years later, in the year 64,
writing to the Ephesians, he calls himself
" less than the least of all saints " ; and in the
year 65, when just finishing his course and
ready to enter into his Master's joy, he writes
to Timothy and calls himself "the chief of
sinners." His sins seem to grow behind him
as the love and glory of Christ grow before
him. Christ's grace seems larger for his en-

RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES 61
larging view of his sins, and his sins seem
greater for his increasing sense of the love
that has washed these sins away.
It cannot be safe for us to be blind to the
sins which God sees clearly enough ; and yet
how greatly we ignore that large region of
our sinfulness that is below the surface, out
of the view of others, and often out of our
own view too ! Open sins we easily detect,
and perhaps confess, but sins of thought and
imagination and feeling — the deep stirrings of
pride and vanity, of covetousness and im
purity, of resentment and envy and discon
tent — we hardly think of these ; or, if we do,
we excuse them easily as being just sins of
our nature and temperament and constitution,
for which we are hardly responsible, or at
least much less responsible than we are for
open sins.
All self-deceptions such as these will perish
when we are really alone with God. In the
secret of His presence, and under its all-reveal
ing light, we will see that our worst sins are
not the open ones (great as these may be)

62 RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES
that are only exceptional, but the hidden sins,
continually active though working in the dark ;
just as an army of white ants will pick a
carcase clean sooner than a lion will.
It is very significant that in jSj>lomon's cata
logue of "six things which the Lord hates,
yea, seven which are an abomination unto
Him," the very foremost place is given to
what few men would consider a sin at all —
"a proud look, a lying tongue, hands that
shed innocent blood, a heart that deviseth
wicked imaginations, feet that are swift to
run to mischief, a false witness that speaketh
lies, and he that soweth discord among
brethren." A black catalogue that ! most of
them sins that all men will condemn, and of
which most men would be ashamed. But at
the very head of the list stands the "proud
look," and as there cannot be a proud look
unless there is a proud heart behind it, it is
the hidden pride of heart that here is stamped
with the foremost reprobation of God. When
the sanctimoniousness of the Pharisee in the
temple was scathingly held up to view by

RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES 63
Jesus Christ, the working of his proud heart
was unmistakably seen. His words, "God, I
thank Thee that I am not as other men,"
were no expression of indebtedness to God.
They meant simply, "I have great reason to
congratulate myself." The mask of saintliness
that gained him credit in the eyes of men
was torn off by the only hand that could do
it, and then the proud heart (the parent of
the proud look) stood revealed. Therefore it
is that when Christ speaks of the distinguish-
ing marks of the heirs of His kingdom, He
puts in the foreground that deep humility
which is the direct opposite of the proud
heart, and says, "Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
So, too, when the disciples came asking Him,
"Who is the greatest in the kingdom of
heaven?" He took a child and set him in
their midst and answered, " Whosoever shall
humble himself as this little child."
The road of self-humbling is the only road
that leads to peace and honour at last.
" Stoop ! stoop ! " said Samuel Rutherford.

64 RIGHT SELF-ESTIMATES
writing to a most pious and godly friend —
" Stoop ! stoop ! it is a low, low door by which
we enter the kingdom of God." Nowhere can
we learn this so well as in the secret place
where we are alone with God.

OUR PERFECT FREEDOM OF
CONFESSION WHEN ALONE WITH GOD

' Thou knowest, Lord, the weariness and sorrow
Of the sad heart that comes to Thee for rest;
Cares of to-day, and burdens of to-morrow,
Blessings implored, and sins to be confessed.
I come before Thee, at Thy gracious word,
And lay them at Thy feet, — Thou knowest, Lord."
Jane L. Borthwick.

VII
OUR PERFECT FREEDOM OF
CONFESSION WHEN ALONE WITH GOD
TN the secret of His presence we can lay bare
to Him, without fear, the inmost secrets
of the soul. This is what we cannot do even
to the dearest friend on earth. It is what we
sometimes dare not do. Our lips are sealed
for very shame. But freely and unrestrainedly
we can confide our most secret shames and
sadnesses to the ear of our listening Lord.
It is this that makes the prayer-chamber a
place of such infinite relief to an overburdened
spirit. There is a most suggestive argument in the
Epistle to the Hebrews that makes God's perfect
knowledge of us the very ground of our freedom
67

68 PERFECT FREEDOM OF CONFESSION
in prayer. "All things are naked and opened
unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do."
What then ? " Let us, therefore, tremble before
Him and shrink from His eye " ? Not so : " Let
us, therefore, come boldly to the Throne of Grace,
that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to
help in time of need." A surprising argument,
but a very comforting one. It may look the
very opposite of comforting to remind us of
One whose knowledge of us is so minute : and
so, when we go on to read of the sympathy
of a tempted Christ, we might suppose that
that consideration was brought in merely to
neutralise the oppressiveness of the Omni
science. But the truth is that even Divine
sympathy would be of very little use to us
unless it were based upon a perfect knowledge
of every element in the case : otherwise it would
be an ignorant sympathy; and an ignorant
sympathy can do no one much real good.
Is it not so even in human things ? You are
in trouble and perplexity because your worldly
affairs have all gone wrong. Extrication from
your difficulties seems impossible. You go to

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 69
consult a wise friend about the case, and you
lay before him a pretty full statement of it,
but do not tell him all. Some of your trans
actions that look to yourself and will look to
others decidedly dishonest you conceal, either
from shame or fear. Your friend gives you the
best advice he can: but it does not relieve you
much. You cannot act upon it, because you
see clearly that it is based upon a very imperfect
knowledge of what the case really is. Finding
you ere long still in the depths, of gloom, he
says to you, "I suspect you are keeping some
thing back; you have not confided everything
to me: if I am to be of real service to you,
there must be no half -confidences, I must know
the very worst; you must honestly tell me
all." And then you do tell him all. It costs
you something to lay bare to him your hidden
sins: but the next moment you are surprised
to hear him say that now, for the first time,
he sees the true way of relief. He can help
you just because he knows the very worst
about you. Is it not just in this way that
God's perfect knowledge of us becomes an

70 PERFECT FREEDOM OF CONFESSION
assurance to us that He can really help us in
our time of need? What He says to us is,
"Because I know everything about you, come
with boldness to my Throne of Grace."
This is a surprising argument perhaps : but
it will not be a wholly surprising one to those
who know what the heart of God really is.
Have we ever noted what kind of words the
Bible uses to describe that heart? It speaks
not only of the " grace " that is in it, but of the
" riches of grace ; and exceeding riches of
grace " ; not only of the " kindness " that is in
it, but the " loving kindness " ; not only of the
" mercies " that are in it, but the " tender
mercies." There is in us such a thing as
kindness without love ; there is sometimes love
without kindness. But there is a sweet
compound of both of these, making "loving
kindness," and that is found in perfection in
the heart of God. There are in us mercies that
are not particularly tender. It is a mercy
often to a child to chastise it for its wilfulness ;
it may be a mercy to a criminal to shut him
up in prison ; but there is nothing very

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 71
"tender" in either of these operations. There
is a "tenderness," too, that is deficient in real
mercy. It is mere weak, foolish, hurtful, good-
natured indulgence. But mercy and tenderness
can also be combined; and for their perfect
combination we must look into the heart of
God. -And it is there that the Apostle bids us
look for our encouragement to " come boldly to
the Throne of Grace."
What most of all prevents our coming boldly
is our deep consciousness of sin. An over
whelming sense of sin makes us doubtful of a
welcome if we should draw nigh. Prayer to
the Infinitely Holy One, who is also the
Infinitely Knowing One, seems almost an insult
when uttered by creatures so unholy as we
feel ourselves to be. But it is that Holy One
Himself who says, " Put all that consciousness
of My knowledge of your worst as an argu
ment on the other side; precisely because I
do know all, trust Me to be able to help you
when you come." The argument is just : for,
if He knows all about us, He knows more than
merely our sins. He knows our difficulties, our

72 PERFECT FREEDOM OF CONFESSION
infirmities, our struggles, our temptations, our
conflicts, our longings, our aspirations; and
His heart is going out to us in deep com
passionating love, even when (judging Him
by ourselves) we think of Him as standing
sternly aloof from us, coldly and critically
and accusingly looking on from a distance.
Surely there is nothing so little understood
as the Heart of God, else we would never be
afraid to go to Him with our sins, as well as
with our griefs : for there is nothing in which
He spends His blessed life more gladly than in
pardoning and helping sinners. The largeness
of His Heart does not wait till the worthiness
of man can meet it. He deals with us in a way
of transcendent generosity. His love is always
far ahead of our prayers. He "prevents us
with the blessings of goodness " : and, when
any downcast heart cries out to Him in its
sinfulness, quicker than a lightning flash His
love leaps to the conclusion of mercy ; and ere
the broken prayer is half uttered, the mercy
is on its way.
We thus see how the distrust that so often

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 73
oppresses us at the very door of the secret
place is to be overcome. It is by having the
very largest conceptions of the heart of God in
Jesus Christ. We make our sin an argument
for fearing God. He makes it an argumert
for coming nigh. The utmost we can think of
Him as saying is, "Although you are sinful,
you may come." He puts it quite another way,
" Because you are so sinful, come — come because
you need Me so much." Alas for all of us, if
we needed to stop sinning before we could
confidently pray ! Alas for us if only perfect
men could come boldly to the Throne of Grace !
If we go to God at all, we must, like the
prodigal, go in our rags, and hunger, and sin,
and utter need : but the compassionate Father,
whose heart has never changed, will see us
while we are yet "a great way off" — for He
has been on the outlook for us, waiting for
our coming — and He will shorten the distance
between us and Him by going forth to meet
us: and ere we have got half of our weeping
confession out, He will be calling for the robe,
and the ring, and the fatted calf, and giving
us such a welcome as we never hoped to find.

THE COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD

"Thou knowest, not alone as God All- Knowing,
As man, our mortal weakness Thou hast proved
On Earth, with purest sympathies o'erflowing,
0 Saviour 1 Thou hast wept, and Thou hast loved:
And love and sorrow still to Thee may come,
And find a hiding-place, a rest, a home.''
Jane L. Borthwick.

VIII
THE COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD
TF it is an encouragement to us in the secret
place of prayer that we have a Divine
Listener who knows us thoroughly, it is a
further encouragement that we have a Divine
Sympathiser who can feel for us as well : " a
Great High Priest who is passed into the
heavens," who "knows what sore temptations
are, for He has felt the same." The word " High
Priest " has, to our modern ears, no very special
or tender significance ; but to an ancient Jew
it was as significant as the word " Mother " is
to us. The High Priest was the living embodi
ment of God's pity for the sinful: and he was
77

78 COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
" taken from among men " that he might be
able to understand men when pleading for
them with God. It will help us greatly, in the
secret place, to think of Jesus as our High
Priest, "made like His brethren" that His own
experience of temptation might qualify Him for
being a sympathising listener to their confes
sions at His feet.
It helps us greatly to think of Him as " in all
points tempted like as we are." It is not said
that He was tempted in all circumstances like
ourselves. We find ourselves in circumstances
where Christ never was : and we might, there
fore, be inclined to say, " He was never situated
just as I am, in business, or in society, or in
domestic life; and however He may pity me,
He cannot sympathise with me here." But He
was tempted in all points as we are. There was
no part of His human nature that temptation
did not assail. Every sense and every faculty
which in us is attacked by temptation, was
attacked in Him. By sight, by sound, by touch,
by taste, by love, by fear, by shame, by ambi
tion, by doubt, by despair, He was assailed just

FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 79
as any of ourselves. In all points, on all sides
of His nature, He was tempted like us, though
not by the same things : and so He can under
stand and sympathise with us as none else
can do.
It helps us, too, to think of Him as one who
" suffered being tempted " : fox if it was in some
way pain to Him to resist and overcome, He can
sympathise with the pain temptation brings on
us. The pain of it in His case was due to the
fact that He was so perfectly human as well as
perfectly Divine, and His human nature, like
our own, had sensibilities easily wounded and
weaknesses easily played upon. When tempted
in the wilderness, it was His bodily hunger and
the weakness caused by it that made the
temptation sore. He might have overcome
without any pain if the temptation had come
immediately after that wonderful scene when,
at His baptism, the Holy Ghost descended on
Him, and He heard the voice from heaven,
" This is My beloved Son" : for when the soul is
at the white heat of a great enthusiasm, glowing
with the fire of the Spirit, any assault will

80 COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
scarcely touch it. In a high spiritual tempera
ture, we are almost above some forms of
temptation. Evil suggestions die as soon as
they are born. They fall like arrows on a shield
of triple brass. But the tempter waited till the
bodily exhaustion of Jesus gave him a chance he
never had before : and it is from our weakness,
too, that temptation borrows all its force. A
temptation which one day we easily cast off,
another day as easily overpowers us. It may be
the same temptation, but we are not the
same ; we are changed in outward circum
stances — changed, perhaps, in health ; our whole
atmosphere is changed. When physically and
spiritually strong, temptation is weak: when
physically and spiritually weak, temptation is
strong and resistance to it is pain.
Sin does not lie in the passions and appetites,
but in the will. It does not lie even in the
strength of the passions, but in the absence of
a stronger controlling will : and Christ's sinless-
ness lay not in the want of the feelings natural
to man, but in the complete subordination of
these feelings to the higher feelings of a will

FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 81
perfectly at one with God. He had a perfectly
human love of rest, and in that there was no
sin ; He needed rest. But when tempted to give
up His Father's work for the sake of rest His
perfect will cried, " I must work the works My
Father giveth Me to do." He had a perfectly
human indignation at injustice and wrong —
witness His words : " Are ye come out as
against a thief, with swords and staves, to take
Me ? " — an indignation that in any of us would
pass easily into revenge : and He overcame the
temptation by saying, " but the Scriptures must
be fulfilled." He had a perfectly human shrink
ing from shame and dishonour — a shrinking,
therefore, from the disgrace attaching to a
crucifixion -death. In that there was no sin.
But when tempted on that account to refuse the
Cross, He conquered by the faith that said, "Not
My will but Thine be done."
In all this He "learned obedience by the
things He suffered " ; learned the pain that must
often be involved in obedience where weak men
are concerned ; learned it as He could not other
wise have done, by actual participation in their
7

82 COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
weakness. When tempted to relieve His hunger
by an act of disobedience and distrust, or when
tempted to secure the homage of the crowd by
proclaiming Himself an earthly king, there was
really no risk of His yielding to the temptation,
for His perfect will beat only in harmony with
the will of God; but he learned, by enduring
the temptation, how hard it must often be for
weak men, whose wills arejio^yserfectly attuned
to God, to overcome : how hard the struggle
must sometimes be for those who see that
earthly gain will be the result of some specious
sin, while righteousness brings no reward on
earth at all, but only suffering and tears, and
who, seeing this, are, in a moment of temptation,
sorely perplexed, and scarce know how to escape
defeat. The " suffering " under temptation thus
gave Him a new power of experimental sym
pathy with suffering men. He gained the
advantage of being able to sympathise with
the painful struggles of His brethren, while
He had not the disadvantage of being Him
self overcome: for He was tempted, "yet
vnthout sin."

FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 83
Does it seem strange to call His sinlessness an
advantage to His sympathy ? Do we think it
would have been better for us if He had known
something of defeat? If even once He had been
overcome, would not that have brought Him
nearer to us, and made us more assured of His
sympathy in our defeats?
But we are called to the Throne of Grace to
obtain mercy, and not merely a sort of indulgent
or easy-going indifference to our falls. What
kind of sympathy is it that we need in Him to
whom we lay bare the secrets of our hearts,
and who is our Judge, as well as our Brother
Man? Does the fact that a man has fallen
before temptation make him better able to
adjudicate faithfully between the claims of
Righteousness on the one side and Mercy on
the other? Not so. It makes him weakly
indulgent rather than mercifully kind.
It has been well remarked that there are two
classes of men quite unfitted for being judges
of others : those who have never been tempted,
and those who have fallen. Men who feel no
temptation whatever to certain sins are often

84 COMFORT OF CHRIST'S SYMPATHY
severest in condemning those in whom the
tendency to these sins is strong. They are un
merciful because they have never been tempted.
But men who have fallen before temptation are
equally unfit to show mercy. They are lenient
enough, but it is not a holy leniency, only a
weak indulgence. Their maxim is, "Human
nature is terribly weak and terribly corrupt;
sin can hardly be helped ; we must say little
about sin, and take men as they are." There is
only One who can hold the balance steady
between unfair severity and unholy leniency;
because, though He felt temptation's power, He
came forth from it unsubdued : and hence it is
that God has " committed all judgment " to
Christ, " because He is the Son of Man."
It is infinitely encouraging this thought of the
tempted but victorious Christ. It makes the
secret place of prayer a place of trustful rest
to a weary sin-tempted heart. Going into it
to speak to such a Lord, so infinitely holy and
yet so infinitely tender ; our Judge and yet our
Saviour, our King and yet our Priest; Divine,
and therefore able to read us thoroughly —

FELT WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 85
human, and therefore able to sympathise with
us all the time, we can go boldly to the
Throne, and find it not merely a Throne of
Justice, but a Throne of Compassion, a Throne
of Grace.

THE BLESSEDNESS OF A BROKEN AND
CONTRITE HEART REALISED WHEN
WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD.

" Birds have on all green trees their nest,
Foxes their holes, and man his bed :
All creatures have their quiet rest, —
Thou hadst not where to lay Thy head.
And yet, Lord, Thou didst come to give
Thy weary-hearted children rest,
To bid the mourning sinner live,
To soothe the aching, troubled breast.
Oh I since on earth Thou lovest best
To dwell in souls that mourn their sin,
Come 1 take Thine everlasting rest
This broken, contrite heart within 1 " Anon.
" The touch that heals the broken heart
Is never felt above :
The angels know His blessedness,
But way-worn hearts His love." P.B.

IX

THE BLESSEDNESS OF A BROKEN AND
CONTRITE HEART REALISED WHEN
WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD.
T~F it is when alone with God that we realise
the whole extent of our sinfulness, till the
heart is broken with the shame of it, it is
there too that we can best hear the whisper
of peace from a sin-forgiving God, by which
the broken heart is healed. For we cannot
parade a broken heart. It shuns the unsym
pathetic glare of day. If we carry it on the
face, and ask every one to pity us because of
it, that only proves that it is not really a
broken heart at all. But we can tell the Divine
listener about it in the secret place, and feel
that such a heart "He will not despise." He
89

90 THE BROKEN HEART HEALED
will pity it, and heal it too. In the secret
place we learn this wonderful fact, that a
broken heart is what God delights to see !
There are not many things He delights to
see in a broken condition ; but this is one of
them. He has no delight in seeing broken
promises, or broken vows, or broken command
ments, or broken restraints. These are the
very things He charges against us, to prove
how sinful we are. But there are some things
that are best in their broken condition. It
is from the broken earth that the harvest
springs, from the broken cloud that the rain
distils, from the broken alabaster-box that the
sweet perfume flows. It is by broken grain
that man is fed, and by the broken life of
Christ that everlasting life is ours. We sing
of Him, " Bread of the world in mercy broken."
His own words are, " My body broken for you."
When the truth about everything now dark
is at last revealed, it will be seen how precious
in God's sight have been many broken things;
how broken hopes for this world led to the
better hope of heaven, broken earthly fortunes

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 91
to the winning of eternal riches, broken health
to the healing of the soul. But chief among
all these precious things is the broken heart,
a heart that has lost all its hardness and
pride, a heart that is humbled to the dust in
penitence and prayer, a heart that no longer
lifts itself up in self-sufficiency, but lies con
trite at God's feet, a heart to which sin has
become the most bitter of all bitter things, and
deliverance from sin the highest blessing of
which it can conceive.
What often goes by the name of heart-
brokenness has little or nothing to do with
the consciousness of personal sin. It might
rather be called heart-wretchedness. The spirit
is broken by the troubles and disappointments
of life ; but that is all. There is nothing sancti
fying in a misery such as that : often the very
reverse. It produces a sullen discontent which
sometimes rises to wild complainings against
the world and against God Himself. That is
" the sorrow that worketh death." Real heart-
brokenness for sin is a different thing
altogether. It " worketh repentance unto

92 THE BROKEN HEART HEALED
salvation " ; it is a " sickness that is not unto
death, but for the glory of God, that the Son
of God may be glorified thereby."
No wonder, therefore, that " a broken and
contrite heart He will not despise." How can
He despise what He has been at infinite pains
to bring about? The whole purpose, both of
His providential dealings outwardly and of
the strivings of His Spirit within, is just to
bring down the hard self-sufficiency of the
heart that rebels against His law, and puts
aside His grace ; arid to force from it the
confession, " I am a sinner all over, a sinner
all through": and if He perseveres in this
work till the result is reached in a completely
" broken and contrite heart," how can He but
rejoice to hear its self-accusations and to see
its tears ?
It is a wonderful change that comes over
any man when, instead of flattering himself
and praising himself as he used to do, he can
honestly speak of " abhorring himself." It is
a radical change that. It is no mere surrender
of the outposts. It is the fall of the citadel.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 93
It is not a reform merely; it is a revolution,
and the very revolution God has been making
and waiting for.
It is a striking proof of God's delight in a
broken heart that whenever He means to
bring His largest and most enduring blessings
to any of us He begins by breaking us down.
It often costs much to have this done. The
process is pain, but the blessing is sure.
There is a legend somewhere which tells
how a certain wilful Franciscan monk refused
most stubbornly to obey his superior's com
mands, and how a severe but suggestive
discipline was resorted to, to break down his
will. His brethren dug a deep perpendicular
grave, placed him standing in it, and began
to fill in the earth. After a few shovelfuls
were thrown in he was asked, " Is your will
dead yet ? " but there was no response from
the iron heart. So the burying process went
on, and the same question was repeated as the
earth reached, successively, his loins, his breast,
his neck : but the stubborn heart would give
no reply. Remorselessly the earth was thrown

94 THE BROKEN HEART HEALED
in again. It reached his lips. In a few
moments more they would have been stilled
for ever. But then the iron will broke utterly.
The submissive friar meekly answered, " I
am dead."
How hard the discipline is that is needed to
break down the heart in penitence before its
God, many a man from his own experience
can tell. But it is worth the pain. A breaking
heart is not a happy heart : but the reason of
that is not that some of it is broken, but that
so much of it is still unbroken and whole.
When broken thoroughly, it becomes a happy
heart at once : for — strange but true — .it is
only when completely broken that it is
completely healed.
There was a remarkable law connected with
the cleansing of the leper : " The priest shall
consider, and behold, if the leprosy have
covered all the flesh, he shall pronounce him
clean that hath the plague." Has not that a
spiritual meaning for ourselves? Our Divine
Priest waits till our sense of our own corrup
tion is so deep that we confess " from the sole

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 95
of the foot even to the head there is no sound
ness in us," before He can say to us, " Go in
peace and be whole of thy plague " : for —
" Let our debts be what they may, however great or small,
So soon as we have nought to pay, our Lord forgives
us all ;
'Tis perfect poverty alone that sets the soul at large,
While we can call one mite our own, we have no full
discharge."
But, just as the leper was " shut up alone " when
this discovery of his condition was made, it is
when alone with ourselves that we come to
see our utter sin; when alone with God that
we come to realise His utter grace, and through
that grace to get our instant release. So long
as we forgive ourselves, we are not forgiven
by the Lord. When we utterly condemn our
selves, He says to us, "Be thou clean."
It is strange how men, with the Bible in
their hands, persist in thinking that God will
accept what, a thousand times over, He has
declared, in the plainest terms, He cannot
accept. There are multitudes of professedly
rehgious men, who, if they gave an absolutely
honest statement of their hopes for the here-

96 THE BROKEN HEART HEALED
after, would point complacently to their general
uprightness, their freedom from gross sins, the
kindly affections of their social and domestic
life. They really go to God with a claim of
right founded on virtues which half the tomb
stones of the world attribute to all that sleep
beneath them ! They never had any deep sense
of personal sin, never uttered a really heart
broken cry for pardon, never were disturbed
for an hour by any self-condemnation; and
yet they have no doubt of a rightful place in
God's heaven at last. What a terrible surprise
to such men will be the first moment after
death — when they find that that heaven is
filled only with broken hearts, and a broken
heart is a thing they never knew.
Why has God such delight in the broken
heart ? First, because He gets His right place
within it, the only place He will ever consent
to fill. Secondly, because Christ is adequately
valued only by the broken heart. What a
glory weeping eyes can see in Jesus of Nazareth
and Calvary ! The poor broken-hearted thief
upon the Cross saw more in Him than all the

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 97
self-satisfied scribes and Pharisees could do.
"He came," says Pascal, "to heal the sick and
let the healthy die." Thirdly, because the
Word of Life is so precious to the broken
heart. " I have learned more within these
curtains than from all the books I ever read,"
said Richard Cecil on his bed of suffering : and
why ? just because he read the Bible there,
not as a critic, nor as a controversialist, nor
even as a minister for the sake of others, but
simply as a sinner, a broken-hearted man.
And fourthly, because as the Hearer of prayer
" the Lord is nigh to them that are of a
broken heart." There are no prayers like the
prayers of the broken heart. No " princes "
have such " power with God " as broken-hearted
men. Jacob, in one night of broken-hearted
wrestling with God, gained more than he had
gained by the feebler prayers of half a century.
One great defect, surely, in the religion of the
day is that there is not enough of the broken
heart in it. Oh for more! and, in order to
that a larger acquaintance with the secret
place where God, in showing us ourselves,
shows us Himself as well. 8

A BURDENED CONSCIENCE SOONEST
GETS RELIEF WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD

" Thy works, not mine, 0 Christ,
Speak gladness to this heart;
They tell me all is done,
They bid my fears depart.
Thy Cross, not mine, 0 Christ,
Has borne the awful load
Of sins, that none in earth
Or heaven could bear but God.
Thy death, not mine, 0 Christ,
Has paid the ransom due;
Ten thousand deaths like mine
Would have been all too few.
To whom save Thee,
Who can alone
For sins atone,
Lord, shall I flee ? " H. Bonar.
" 0 my Eedeemer, who for me wast slain,
Thou bringest me forgiveness and release ;
Thy death has ransomed me to God again,
And now my heart can rest in perfect peace." Spitta.

A BURDENED CONSCIENCE SOONEST
GETS RELIEF WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD
T~F it delights God to see a thoroughly broken
heart bending low before Him, to heal
that broken heart delights Him yet more:
and so, into the secret place where we wait
to hear His voice, He comes and says, "When
men are cast down, thou shalt say, there is
lifting up," and He shows us what the up
lifting is.
It was when the troubled company of con
science-stricken disciples were within the shut
doors of the upper room that the Risen Lord
came in and said, " Peace be unto you." That
was a wonderful greeting, for they were not
101

102 TROUBLED CONSCIENCE PACIFIED
merely in terror of their lives ; they were in
remorse of conscience for their cowardly for
saking of Him; and He meant it not merely
to calm their human fears, but to bring them
such joyful news as had never gladdened them
before. He was speaking to them from the
other side of the Cross than the one they were
thinking of, from the heavenly side both of
the Cross and of the grave : speaking not merely
as the absent Friend who had come again to
them, and come without any upbraiding of
them for their sin, but as the Great Conqueror
who had overcome, and whose triumphant
"It is finished" had laid the foundation for a
peace between them and God which nothing
evermore could shake. His message, " Peace
be unto you," was far more than just a kindly
greeting. It meant, "I have made full atone
ment for you on the Cross, and the atonement
has been ratified in heaven, for I am risen
from the dead; I bring you peace with God,
and assure you of it."
In the quiet of the shut doors of our homes
and hearts He brings the same message to

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 103
those who long to hear it. It is often the
very message we most need to hear. For we
so often and so easily lose the sense of peace
with God. We fall under the power of
temptation, and darkness comes between us
and Him. We feel our sins to be great
barriers between Him and us that we cannot
overleap. It will not do to silence our con
sciences. They only speak the louder for the
attempt to smother them : and there is an
infinite difference between a conscience pacified
and a conscience merely benumbed. The deep
cry of the broken heart is not for cosmetics
to give the appearance of health, but for a
cure that will reach the very seat of the evil,
and purge it thoroughly. And God meets the
cry, just by bringing us back to the sim
plicities of the Gospel of His grace. There is
no other way.
Any peace that does not honestly face our
personal guilt, that either ignores it, or denies
it, or excuses it, is not worth seeking for. It
cannot last. For the very first condition of
peace between us and God is a settlement of

104 TROUBLED CONSCIENCE PACIFIED
His controversy with us about our personal
sin : and till we get that sin forgiven, can
celled, put xjut of the way, His controversy
with us must go on. But sin can be forgiven
only at the Cross of Christ. The only answer
to a guilty conscience is, " Christ has died " :
and the simplicity of the Gospel message is its
pointing to that one glorious fact, and telling
us that if we want peace with God we must
think not of some righteousness of our own to
be made by constant effort as perfect as we
can make it to be, but of the already per
fect Righteousness of God's Christ which may
be ours for the taking, if only we stretch out
for it an absolutely empty hand.
John Bunyan tells how, walking alone in
the fields, crushed by the misery of an accusing
conscience, he seemed to hear a voice above
him that said, " The Lord our Righteousness "
— and how, immediately, the thought flashed
into his troubled soul, "It is righteousness God
wants in me to take me into heaven; well, if
Christ is my righteousness, then my righteous
ness has been in heaven, and God has been

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 105
looking at it, for sixteen hundred years " ; and so
he came out of the darkness into the light of
a perfect peace. It is only so that peace can
come to any man : for what God gives us
through His Son is not salvability merely, but
actual salvation; not just the hope of acquittal
hereafter, but full acquittal here and now,
immediate peace through " the one sacrifice for
sins for ever" offered on the Cross.
We need to be continually going back to
that Cross to read the fourth inscription
written on it. For there were four, though
Pilate intended there should be only three.
He wrote, in contempt for the Crucified, a
threefold inscription which was visible to
every passer - by : but all the time God's
unseen hand was writing a fourth inscription
there in eternal praise of the Crucified, but
which only the eyes of faith can see. Millions
have gazed upon the Cross as it blazed on
splendid altars, or glittered on priestly robes,
or shone on cathedral spires, and yet have
not seen this Divine inscription on it. Millions
have marched to battle under the standard of

106 TROUBLED CONSCIENCE PACIFIED
j the Cross, and yet have not seen it. Millions
wear the Cross as an ornament upon their
; dress, and yet do not see it. But to the eye
of faith it stands out as clear as the rainbow
did against the cloud of judgment: and that
Divine inscription is the one foundation of all
our peace. It is this, "God, in Christ, recon
ciling the world to~Himself, not imputing
their trespasses unto them," "making Him to
be sin for them who knew no sin, that they
might be made the righteousness of God in
Him." There is certainly more in the Gospel than
just the doctrine of the Cross : but that lies at
the foundation of all else. And though there
is a sense in which we ought to get beyond
the Cross, even as Christ did, and rise like
Him into new and free and glorious life, there
is also a sense in which we can never get
beyond the Cross, but must come back to it,
and linger at it, again, yet again, if our peace
is to be full. It is a simple truth this, too
simple for many, but in its very simplicity
lies its power.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 107
It is good for us to look much at the living
Christ. We do not look at Him nearly
enough as an Example and a Friend. But
our soul's rest must still be the sacrifice of
Calvary. A stimulus to holiness we can find
in His life : the cleansing of our conscience
we can find only in His "Blood." The
Crucified Christ must be the Alpha and the
Omega of all our peace with God. To live in
settled peace with Him we have to do with
the " atoning blood of Christ " what Rahab did
with the scarlet cord that was to her the
pledge of safety — so place it that wherever we
may look it may meet the eye. She fastened
the scarlet cord in the window of her house,
and could not look out in any direction with
out looking across it. Let us place the atoning
blood in the window of the soul, so that,
whether we look earthwards or heavenwards,
it may every day remind us wherein our
peace with God must lie ; the great atonement
made on Calvary, once for all.
There are few professed Christians to whom
Christ's atonement is not something, but fewer

108 TROUBLED CONSCIENCE PACIFIED
still to whom, as the basis of hope, it is all.
Some make Gods of their own. Some make
Christs of their own. And some make half-
Christs. They make Saviours, or half-Saviours,
of their repentances, their good resolves, their
benevolences, their integrity, their prayers.
As they lie on dying beds they look over
their past lives, not completely satisfied, but
half satisfied : and, scraping together all the
good they can find in themselves, they bring
in Christ to eke out their deficiencies and
make up the rest.
How many have yet to learn that a half-
Christ will not do — have yet to learn to spell
"works" and "grace" without mingling the
letters — have yet to learn that the "robe of
righteousness" is not patchwork, partly theirs
and partly His, but must be His alone ! The
message of the Gospel is not that Christ came
to help the weak or subsidise the imperfect, but
"to save the lost." And if it is one glory of
the Gospel that it tells of salvation " without
money," it is an equal glory of the Gospel
that it tells of salvation without delay.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 109
" Being justified by faith we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ."
The same Cross that shows the exceeding
awfulness of sin, since no blood could expiate
it, and no death pardon it, but the blood and
death of God's own Sinless and Beloved Son,
shows also the exceeding riches of His grace
that asks no penance from us ere forgiveness
comes, but pardons freely and pardons at
once. And thus the Cross makes us at once
the lowliest and the joyfullest of men— lowly,
because our sin we never can forget, ^joyful
because God has forgotten it for ever.
"Now when Christian came up to the Cross,
his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and
fell from off his back, and tumbled into the
sepulchre, and he saw it no more. Then he
gave three leaps of joy, and went on, singing —
" ' Blest Cross 1 Blest sepulchre I blest rather be
The Man that there was put to shame for me.' "

THE TROUBLED HEART COMES QUICKLY
TO QUIET REST WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD

" Lord, gather from the regions dim and far,
Desires and thoughts that wander far from Thee ;
To home and rest lead on, 0 guiding star, —
No other home or rest but God for me
To Thee my heart as incense shall arise,
Consumed upon Thine altar all my will;
Love, praise, and peace, an evening sacrifice,
In Thee, my Lord, I rest, and I am still." Tersteegen.
i " O'er the waves that cannot rest,
O'er the drifting foam,
Wandering dove without a nest,
Weary-winged I come.
Still and sweet the silence deep
Where no foot hath trod;
Softer than an infant's sleep
Is my rest in God." Tersteegen.

XI

THE TROUBLED HEART COMES QUICKLY
TO QUIET REST WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD
A VERY beautiful name is given to Christ
-^- when He is called "The Lord of Peace."
He is the Great Peacemaker, for He has
" made peace by the blood of His Cross " ; and
He is also the Great Peaeegiyer, for He says,
"My peace I give unto you." Bringing to us,
first of all, peace of conscience, and teaching
us how to look_up_to JZod without_fear, He
brings us, next, peace of heart, and teaches us
how to look out upon tfA^woridjwithouJjJiear.
By His Cross He makes us satisfied with
God's way of saving us ; by His life He teaches
us to be equally satisfied with God's way of
9 113

114 THE TROUBLED HEART FINDS REST
training us. He brings us into His own
perfect calm by showing us how to live, as He
Himself always did, with an absolutely un
questioning trust in a Heavenly Father's love.
Those hours and even days of restless worry
and anxiety about earthly things that so often
come to us — how utterly unlike they are to the
habitual feelings of Jesus Christ ! Not one
single instance can we find in which He sought
to have His earthly lot changed from what His
Father had appointed it to be, or complained
because He could not change it, or made
Himself miserable by anticipating the sorrows
that were lying in front and ready to fall.
We are constantly criticising Jxod. Christ
never did. Even though not actually criticising
Him, we are yet constantly imagining that
things might, somehow, have been better
arranged for us than they are. When any
crushing sorrow falls upon us, the rebellious
heart, if not the lips, will say, "I could have
borne this if it had only come to me at some
other time — if it had come alone, instead of
being accompanied by so many other depress-

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 115
ing circumstances — if it had been of a different
kind, failure in my business instead of failure
in my health, a stroke upon myself instead of
upon my child, the loss of some other friend
than just that one that was the best-beloved
of all," and so on through a hundred supposi
tions of what might have been better arranged.
How seldom do we realise the faithlessness
that is in such a mood of soul as this !
But we may come to realise it, and escape
from it too, if, in the secret of His presence,
alone with Him, we lay our burdens at His
feet and listen for His words of peace. For, as
we listen, He will tell us much.
He will tell us that the whole explanation
of the severity of the trial (in our view of it)
is that our desires and His purposes are not
moving in the same line, that we have not
the same idea of life that He has, otherwise
there would be no disappointment in us with
the pain that life may bring; that if we are
making it our chief aim in life just to have a
prosperous time of self-indulgence, while His
aim is to train us, all along life's way, to

116 THE TROUBLED HEART FINDS REST
holiness of character and heavenliness of spirit,
there is sure to be collision everywhere
between our wills and His, and that not till
this collision ceases can we get the peace we
long to know.
He will tell us, therefore, that what we need
is not that the world should be changed to
us, but that we should be changed to it; that,
in all our plans and ambitions, we should no
longer put first what He puts only second,
and no longer put second what He puts first
and wants us to put first as well: that it is a
complete change of centre that is needed, and
that where that change is made there will be
an instant change all round the circumference
too. In the secret of His presence He will tell us
more. He will tell us that if we rebel against
our trials it is only because we do not Bee His
planned issue of them in our greater ,_good :
that they are only a Great Refiner's fire for
the purifying of His gold, a Great Vine-dresser's
knife for increasing the fruitfulness of His
vines. He will whisper to our crushed hearts

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 117
in the secret place, "What I do thou knowest
not now, but thou shalt know hereafter."
It is only the eye of the sculptor that can
see beforehand the finished statue in the rough
marble-block; but he does see it, and all the
strokes of his tools are meant to bring out to
the eyes of others what is already clear to his
own. And the strokes of God's hand are only
to produce the perfect beauty of the soul, and
make that as visible to others as it now is to
Himself. Nothing is more certain than that
we will be perfectly satisfied with His work
when we see it finished. Why should we not
be satisfied now when He tells us what a
glorious finish He will make, and leave to Him
the choosing of the tools?
Very beautifully was this thought once
pressed home on one who was in acute distress
because of a long succession of calamities,
when, happening to visit a ribbon-weaving
factory, he was shown a new machine for
producing fabrics finer than any seen before.
He examined it carefully ; but, skilled mechani
cian though he was, he. could not understand

118 THE TROUBLED HEART FINDS REST
how the work was done. Finding that all the
movements of wheels and levers and threads
were controlled by some arrangement in a
central box kept closely shut, he asked to be
allowed to look inside, but was told, "The
master keeps the key." These simple words
were Iik"e" a flash of heavenly light into his
darkened soul. " Here is my life," he thought,
"full of what seems to me inextricable con
fusion ; what the meaning of its cross-purposes
may be I cannot tell : but if in me the Divinely
perfect pattern is at last wrought out, I need
not ask on what principle my God is fashion
ing me for His glory, "My Master keeps the
key." Perhaps, if all were known, it would be
found that the majority of trustful disciples
in every age were made so by means of the
heavy afflictions and sadnesses of life ; God
darkening the glory of this world to force
them gently to look to a glory that is not of
this world at all. "Tears are our telescopes
to let us see farther into heaven." God washes
the eyes with tears till they can look un-

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 119
dazzled on the land where tears are known no
more. Then, once again, the Lord will remind us
in the secret place that exemption from suffer

ing is not what He ever^nrom^edjas, hu±. only
victory over it, and sanctification by it, and
peace along with it : and therefore exemption
from it would be a loss and not a gain ; for
as it is the water that dashes against the
mill-wheel that keeps the mill in motion, the
incessantly beating trials of life keep grace in
the soul alive. It is said that migrating
birds, preparing to wing their flight to summer
climes, wait for a wind that blows against
them, for that assists them to rise to the
needed elevation; and the things of which we
often say, "All these things are against me,"
are the things of which God says, "They are
meant to help you to soar."
The one universal heart's ease, therefore, is
to let a loving God take His own wise way
with us. Doing this willingly, we will no
longer torment ourselves with speculations as
to how our sorrows have come, or why they

120 THE TROUBLED HEART FINDS REST
have been permitted to take the special form
that makes them so hard to bear. Our only
feeling will be the feeling of Christ Himself,
whose peace we have come to share, " The cup
which My Father hath given Me, shall I not
drink it?"
Our gracious God promises us more than
sympathy alone when we lay our sorrows at
His feet: He promises us help as well. But
we must" leave to Huh the way of helping us.
Many a time we distress ourselves needlessly
by refusing to rise above our fears till we see
how the help is to come, and in what precise
way we may look for an answer to our
prayers. We want God to explain to us the
secrets of His working before we feel certain
that He will make things go right. But there
is something better than understanding God,
and that is, trusting Him. He does not
promise to explain Himself. He does promise
to reveal Himself: but He never reveals Him
self except to an absolute trust.
When a little child awakes at midnight,
startled and crying because of sounds it knows

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 121
not the meaning of, how is it comforted and
pacified? Is it by a scientific explanation of
the sounds? by a lesson in meteorology or
natural history? Is it not rather by the
mother taking her trembling little one into
her arms, and soothing it there to sleep, till it
thinks no more of the sounds that troubled
it, or of any explanation of the sounds, but
only of the mother in whose sheltering
embrace it lies?
So God takes up each trembling child of
His, and makes it feel safe simply because
He is holding it: and what comforts it is not
what it knows aboutits troubles, or about
the way in which the trouble will be_kept_ at
bay, but what it knows about Him in whose
strong and loving arms it lies enwrapped. In
this there is infinite peace. It is just by
drawing us to Himself in absolute trust that
He changes our restlessness into rest : and
the calming whispers of His love can be heard
nowhere so distinctly as in the secret place of
quiet fellowship, where we are alone with
Him. The oftener we are there, the more of
His peace we shall know.

WE RISE INTO FELLOWSHIP WITH
THINGS UNSEEN WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD

1 Hath not each heart a passion and a dream,
Each, some companionship for ever sweet,
And each, in saddest skies some silver gleam,
And each, some passing joy too faint and fleet,
And each, a staff and stay, though frail it prove,
And each, a face he fain would ever see ?
And what have I? — a glory and a calm,
A life that is an everlasting psalm,
A heaven of endless joy in Thee." Tersteegen.

XII
WE RISE INTO FELLOWSHIP WITH
THINGS UNSEEN WHEN ALONE WITH
GOD
"TT is good to do this, even for a single hour.
It gives us a loftier view of the great
purpose of life, and a calmer view of the
discipline of Hfe. It shows us the infinite
compensations that take the sting out of
the sorrows of life; and it is the only thing
that can do it. Sequestered thus from the
"pride of man," and from "the strife of
tongues," we learn to feel about everything
as Christ felt, who hved habitually above all
the ordinary ambitions of men, and accepted
the deepest humiliations of life as willingly
as a worldly heart would accept a throne.
125

126 FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
It is one of the choicest blessings of the
secret place where we are alone with God,
that there we can so fully enter into fellow
ship with the Unseen ; a fellowship that
enshrines the very root-idea of the Christian
life. What is a_Christian ? Can a better
answer to that question be found than this :
" He is one who is living by faith on an
unseen Saviour, who surrenders himself abso
lutely to the dominion of an unseen Lord,
who acknowledges the mastery of an unseen
hope, who yields himself to the attraction
of an unseen power"?
And yet how difficult it is to live in the
realm of unseen things ! The remoter attrac
tion of the unseen is neutralised by the
nearer attraction of the seen. The needle of
a ship's compass is so adjusted that it may
swing free of the attraction of its immediate
surroundings, and, by being unaffected by
the motion of the vessel, may respond to
the control of an unseen power, the,, great
magnetic current that runs from pole to
pole. It is meant to yield itself to this

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 127
unseen power alone ; but it can respond to
the unseen Jjgjy when ^oose jto_ the seen.
And what our souls need is such an adjust
ment of their relations to the world on the
one hand, and to heaven upon the other,
that, be the fluctuations of their immediate
environment what these may, they will re
spond easily to the great attraction of the

But this is not habitually the case, even
with good men. They are like a compass so
rigidly bolted to the timbers of the ship that
every movement of the vessel seriously affects
it. When the sea of life is calm — in the
hush of Sabbath rest, in the sanctuary of
worship, in the chamber of prayer, in times
of good health and outward prosperity — the
needle points right enough to God and heaven.
But sorrows come, disappointments come,
reverses of fortune come, sickness comes,
temptation comes, and immediately all is
wrong ; the needle points neither to faith,
nor patience, nor peace. Their Christian
graces come out only "weather permitting."

128 FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
Their souls have indeed been touched by the
Divine magnetism, but that influence does
not get free play. What they need is that
their too firm attachment to things seen
should remorselessly be broken, so that the
power of the unseen may be free to act;
and where can this connection with earth
be more effectively cut than in the stillness
of the soul when alone with God, and the
world is for the time shut entirely out?
The value of this absolute surrender to
the unseen is found most emphatically when
trouble of any kind has to be met and
overcome. Surely the great Apostle was
sitting quietly alone with God when he
looked out upon the seething tribulations of
his life, and said, "None of these things
move me." Surely he was very near to God
when he wrote down his triumphant verdict
upon the sufferings of his lot, "Our light
affliction which is but for a moment worketh
for us a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory, while we look not to the
things that are seen, but to the things that

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 129
are not seen; for the things that are seen
are temporal, but the things that are not
seen are eternal."
Christian men of an earnestly spiritual
type are sometimes accused of too much
" other- worldliness '* ; of living too much
among unseen and eternal things, despising
things seen and temporal. The truer charge
against most Christians would be that they
have too much of "present worldliness," that
they do not think half enough of the eternal
that so far transcends the temporal. One of the
ancient philosophers divided men into "earthly "
and "winged" souls. Alas! the "earthly"
souls are many, and the " winged " souls few.
Accused of soaring! God pity us that we
so seldom soar at all, and never high enough.
Even Paul could not always soar. Even he
could not always feel his sufferings to be
"light, and only for a moment." He could
do that only " while he looked to the things
unseen and eternal." God's all-sufficing peace
can come into us in no other way. If this
steady look to things above is wanting, our
10

130 FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
looking at things below will be either terribly
dispiriting or terribly ensnaring.
But the clear upward look enabled him to
reverse entirely the judgments he would
naturally have passed on things below. What
he would naturally have called heavy, he
calls " light " ; what he would otherwise have
fainted under because seeming never to end,
he calls " but for a moment " ; what might
have been thought only a visionary hope, a
phantasm of the imagination, a dream, he
calls a " weight of glory." And he can scarce
find words to express his full sense of its
greatness; it is for him not only "glory,"
but "a weight of glory," "an exceeding
weight of glory," "a more exceeding weight
of glory," "a far more exceeding weight of
glory," "a far more exceeding and eternal
weight of glory." The scales of the balance
in which he weighs his troubles and his
compensations are not in equipoise. One of
them is immeasurably heavier than the other;
and so he feels that "the sufferings of the
present time are not worthy to be com-

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 131
pared with the glory that shall be revealed
in us."
Could we but let into our souls the
grandeur of this thought, our conclusion
would be just what Paul's conclusion was —
that all passionately absorbing pursuit of
earthly honours, distinctions, gains, is not,
as it is commonly held to be, a wise thing,
but supremely foolish, for " the things which
are seen are only temporal " ; and that the
intensest pursuit of spiritual riches is not,
as the world reckons it to be, a foolish
thing, but supremely wise, for "the things
that are unseen are eternal."
If at any time we are planning great
things for ourselves, laying out our future,
so as to secure for ourselves something like
a paradise below, we have but to remember
that " the things that are seen are temporal,"
and that will sober our poor ambitions at
once. If we are mourning too dejectedly
over losses in the past* casting regretful
looks upon vanished joys till a spirit of
bitterness almost crushes faith, we have only

132 FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
to remember again that "the things seen
are temporal," and that will reconcile us to
their loss. We have but to write under our
longest list of earthly treasures, either lost

in the past, or possessed in the present, or
expected in the future, the one word "tem
poral," and the almost magical effect of
realising that fact will be a quick killing
both of our foolish ambitions and of our
sinful regrets. And if, going on to write
out another and a_brighter catalogue^ of the
things that God has^ prepared for us, and is
keeping for us, to be given us in due time,
we put under it or over it the one word
" eternal," the magical effect of realising that
fact will be the perfect peace that keeps
both heart and mind, enabling us to say,
"Well, if God is going to give us so much
that is glorious ere long, we may willingly
let Him send us a little that is grievous
now." We need often to do in secret fellowship
with God what every prudent man of business
does frequently when alone with his books —

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 133
make out a spiritual balance-sheet, a_careful
profit-and-loss account. Vague impressions of
our spiritual solvency should never content
us. We ought, for our heart's peace, to have
the matter made absolutely clear. This was
what Paul evidently did, for we hear him
say, "I reckon that the sufferings of this
present time are not worthy to be compared
with the glory that is to be revealed." "I
have made the calculation," he says, "I
have patiently worked it out." He does not
say, "I believe that that is so"; or, "I take
for granted that it may be so " ; or, "I am
trying hard to feel that it is so." But he says,
" I have accurately estimated all the elements
of the case, I have set the eternal over
against the temporal in every possible light,
and by rigid reckoning I find this to be the
result. I have brought Divine arithmetic to
bear upon the case, and I am as completely
sure of the accuracy of my conclusion as I
am that two and two make four." If this
were to us also, not a conjecture merely, or
a hope, but a conviction founded upon a

134 FELLOWSHIP WITH THINGS UNSEEN
calm and deliberate calculation, the conviction
would be a triumph, and the triumph would
be a song.
And there is really no place where the
great calculation can be so easily and so
unerringly made, as the secret place of fellow
ship with unseen things, where we are alone
with God.

WE CAN HEAR MOST DISTINCTLY THE
WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT WHEN
ALONE WITH GOD

" Come to our poor nature's night
With Thy blessed inward light,
Holy Ghost the Infinite, Comforter Divine 1
Like the dew Thy peace distil,
Guide, subdue our wayward will,
Things of Christ unfolding still,
Comforter Divine 1
In us ' Abba, Father ! ' cry,
Earnest of our bliss on high,
Seal of immortality, Comforter Divine 1 "
Bev. G. Bawson.
"Why should the children of a king
Go mourning all their days?
Great Comforter 1 descend, and bring
Some tokens of Thy grace.
Assure my conscience of her part
In the Bedeemer's blood ;
And bear Thy witness with my heart
That I am born of God." Isaac Watts.

XIII
WE CAN HEAR MOST DISTINCTLY THE
WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT WHEN
ALONE WITH GOD.
rnHB voice of the Holy Spirit is low, and
-^ can be heard distinctly only in the silence
of the soul. It is always a "still small voice,"
easily lost amid the clamour of the noisy
world. But we need to hear it. However
varied and even unwelcome sometimes its
messages may be, we need to hear them all:
but He will speak to us words of comfort
only if we do not turn away when He speaks
words of warning and reproof.
Sometimes He speaks to us in our indifference
as a "Spirit of judgment," convincing us of
our sins. Sometimes He is a rebuking Spirit,
137

138 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
making us ashamed of our deficiencies, and
humbling us to the dust. At other times He
comes into our darkness as the "Spirit of
Light '' ; into our perplexities as the " Spirit
of Wisdom " ; into our ignorance as the " Spirit
of Truth " ; into our fears as the " Spirit of
Peace"; into our weakness as the "Spirit
of Might " ; into our deadness as the " Spirit
of Life." As the " Spirit of Grace and Supplica
tion" He helps us to pray; as the "Anointing
Spirit " He consecrates and empowers us for
service ; and as the " Spirit of Adoption " He
enables us to realise our sonship to the Father,
for the "Spirit Himself beareth witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God."
This is one of the most comforting and
gladdening services the Holy Spirit renders us.
But what is this " witnessing with our spirit " ?
And how is the witness borne? In connection
with this subject there has always been a large
amount of mystical and even fanatical talk;
men who were consciously living in gross sin,
boasting that they had an inward witness telling
them that they were true children of God. But

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 139
even without going so perilously far as that,
many devout and humble Christians greatly
distress themselves by concluding that since
they never heard any such voice proclaiming
their sonship, they must be unworthy to hear
it, and cannot be the children of God at all.
It must be noted, therefore, that Paul speaks
not of one single witness testifying to us a
truth which is to be credited on that testimony
alone, but of two independent witnesses, whose
united witness-bearing can alone prove it to be
a truth. He speaks of the Holy Spirit bearing
witness, not to our spirit, but with our spirit :
and these two really bear witness to different
things. Our own spirit bears witness to facts
which we know, and the Holy Spirit bears
witness to the meaning of these facts.
As thus : I sit down with the open Word
of God, which shows me the characteristic
marks of a soul that has been renewed. My
own spirit tells me that these characteristic
marks can be found in me. I am conscious of
a transforming change in feeling and in life.
Though I am not all that I ought to be, nor

140 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
all that I might be, nor all that I hope to be,
still I am very different from what I once was.
My affections Godward are changed for the
better, my ambitions are changed, my life, too,
is greatly changed. Sin does not gratify me
as once it did. The world does not satisfy me
as once it did. New emotions are now stirring
within me, new longings take possession of me.
The Bible is a delight. Prayer is a joy. I long
for holiness as I never used to do. I surrender
myself to Christ as once I never did. He is
really all to me. I can conceive no higher
blessedness than to be with Him and like Him
for ever. These are simple facts of my own
experience and consciousness. I know them
to be so. And the Holy Spirit interprets to
me the meaning of these facts. It is that I
have been "born again," for "all things are
new." And thus He "bears witness with my
spirit" that I am a child of God.
This is really the whole secret of " assurance
of salvation." There is nothing mystical in it.
By the new Godward feehngs that stir within
ourselves we come to realise our true relation-

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 141
ship to Him who has been the sole Author
of them all. We know the fact of our sonship
because the feelings of sonship are within us,
even though we have sorrowfully to confess
that our filial love and filial trust and filial
obedience fall lamentably short of what they
ought to be.
The case is this: if I want to know whether
God is calling me one of His sons, I ask myself,
" Can I look up confidingly and call Him my
Father, feeling Him to be so indeed?" If I
want to know what His feelings towards me
are, I ask myself, "What are my feelings
towards Him? Can I look up into His face
with the joy of a trustful child and say, • Abba,
Father'?" That was how Jesus felt. But if
"Abba, Father" was the cry of the Son, it is
also the cry within me of the Spirit of the
Son, for He puts it into my heart to say the
same. I can never say that, in all the fulness
and intensity of its blessed meaning, unless
He teaches me to do it: and so I am assured
of my sonship, not because it is a conclusion
of my own mind, but because all the time that

142 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
I am saying, almost tremblingly, "I think I
am a child of God," He whispers in my heart,
" You are so in very deed."
This j?xplainjL_how assurance, Jfflayjebb and
flow ; may be weaker at one time and stronger
at another. If we sink back or down into any
kind of sin, either of the flesh or of the spirit,
there can no longer be an honest witness
within ourselves to our possession of the
characteristics of a child of God ; and the Spirit
being "grieved" by our declension refuses to
bear witness to our sonship. His witness to
the meaning of the characteristics is still the
same as ever; but now that witness stands
alone; the witness of our own hearts to the
possession *of them is silenced ; " our hearts
condemn us, and we have no confidence before
God": there is no bearing witness with our
spirit that we are sons.
The peace of God within us is a delicate
plant, and is easily killed by the frost of sin.
It is a precious treasure, but is easily stolen by
the secret hand of some thievish iniquity. God
will indeed " speak peace to His people," but

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 143
"let them not return to folly," otherwise His
voice will be dumb.
An old writer says : " If any one living an
unholy life were to tell me that he has an
inward Divine assurance of everlasting life,
I would not believe him though he brought
an angel from heaven to corroborate his
assertion ; for the peace of God is holy peace,
and in an unholy heart it cannot dwell." If
God's commanding voice is not obeyed, His
comforting voice will not be heard. "Grow in
holiness, if you want peace to grow in you."
We thus see the one cause of all our dis
heartening variations of hope. The holier we
are, the stronger our assurance is : the more
careless we are, the weaker it is. Only we
must remember that it is not the mere presence
of sin in the heart that proves us to be not
children of God. It is the persistent love of
sin, and its dominion over us, that proves that.
Sin lives in every Christian, but no Christian
willingly and habitually lives in sin. It may
be bis tormentor and enslaver, but it is not
his chosen Lord. It is not really a part of

144 THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT
himself, but only a hateful parasite from whose
gnawing and enfeebling presence he would fain
be free.
To say that an imperfect or faulty Christian
cannot be a son, even though his imperfection
is a sore affliction to himself, is only like saying
of a cripple, "This cannot be the heir, because
he is so deformed," although the deformity is
to him a daily pain. But, on the other hand,
if he were not deformed as he is, but full of
strength and grace, the doubt founded upon his
deformity would never arise. If we were only
more holy, if our likeness to the perfect Christ
were only more clear to ourselves as well as to
others, it would be more evident to ourselves
and to others also that we really belong to
Him: and the voice of His Spirit witnessing
with our own would be more distinctly heard.
For the hearing of that voice there is no
time like the still hour when we are alone
with God. If we are often there, the secret
place where we lay open all the heart to Him
will be a place where deepest joy will mingle
with deepest penitence — "the voice of rejoic-

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 145
ing and salvation" with "the voice pf our
weeping." We shall assuredly see pur sins
there. Even our " secret sins " will be " set
in the hght of His countenance " there : but
He will tell us, as we confess them at His
feet, that they are sins atoned for, and sins
forgiven; and so "a peace that passeth under
standing will keep our heart and mind by
Christ Jesus."

11

WE CAN BEST RENEW OUR STRENGTH
BY BEING MUCH ALONE WITH GOD

"Lord, what a change within us one short hour
Spent in Thy presence will prevail to make 1
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take,
What parched grounds refresh, as with a shower 1
We kneel, and all around us seems to lower;
We rise, and all, the distant and the near,
Stands forth in sunny outline, brave and clear ;
We kneel, how weak ! — we rise, how full of power I
Why, therefore, should we do ourselves this wrong
Or others, that we are not strong,
That we are ever overborne with care,
That we should ever weak or heartless be,
Anxious or troubled, when with us is prayer,
And joy, and strength, and courage are with Thee?"
Archbishop Trench.

XIV
WE CAN BEST RENEW OUR STRENGTH
BY BEING MUCH ALONE WITH GOD
"T71VERY disciple of Jesus Christ is called
by His own commissioning and con
secrating words, to be in the world what He
Himself was from first to last, a true witness
for God. "I have ordained you to go and
bring forth fruit;" "As My Father sent Me,
so send I you." We are to bless the world
by our very presence in it, as well as by our
labours for it. But this we cannot do unless
our strength for service is perpetually re
newed ; and it is only from much secret fellow
ship with Christ that the renewing of our
strength can come.
For He tells us unmistakably that for any
119

150 STRENGTH RENEWED BY
union with Him in service there must first be
union of life. He speaks of Himself as the
Vine, and of His disciples as its branches : but
the whole fruitfulness of the branches depends
upon the closeness of their vital connection
with the Vine. It is the life that is in the
Vine flowing freely and continuously into
them that alone keeps them in a fruit-bearing
condition. If our power as witnesses for God
in the world is small, the reason of that is
given by the Lord Himself, " Cut off from Me,
ye can do nothing." We give out so httle,
only because we take so little in.
The interdependence of the Vine and the
branches is very wonderful. Without the
branches the Vine can do nothing. If His
disciples do not bear fruit, then, so far as the
blessing of the world is concerned, He lives
in vain. But without the Vine the branches
can do nothing. If they cease to bear any
fruit, or if their fruit is poor, it is because the
flow of His Divine life into them has been
checked, or has altogether ceased. All that
the Vine possesses is for the use of the

BEING ALONE WITH GOD 151
branches. The Divine riches of grace are not
stored up in Him for Himself, but for them ;
to be communicated every day and every hour
to each separate branch, that it may use them
for His praise, and so prove the truth of the
words, "From ME is thy fruit found." For
larger fruit-bearing, therefore, we must live in
far closer and more intimate connection with
Christ than we usually seek.
There is an expression used by Paul which
contains an idea somewhat unfamiliar but
very suggestive. He speaks of "growing into
Christ." That is more than growing into the
likeness of Christ. It is growing into in
creasing closeness of personal union to Christ.
The whole Christian life is a growing out of
Christ, as the branch grows out of the stem:
but that outward growth is conditioned by,
and proportioned to, an inward growth, a
growth farther into Christ, as the branch, the
farther out it grows, grows also farther in,
its fibres taking ever a firmer hold of the
stem. There is a deepening of their insertion,
as well as an extension of their spread.- But

152 STRENGTH RENEWED BY
this constant deepening of connection With
Christ, who is our life, is a secret thing, a
process unseen by any eye except God's. Our
outward growth and fruit bearing are the only
things that can be seen of men: but where-
ever this outward growth is, it is the result
of an inner process that cannot be seen, the
soul taking, in secret, an ever firmer hold of
Christ, becoming more and more closely bound
to Him by faith and love, and so receiving
more uninterruptedly the power for serving
Him. That process is one that always goes
on best in our secret hours of heart-fellowship
with the Lord : indeed, it can hardly well go
on anywhere else. Were it continuously going
on, what mighty Christians we might be
come! It may be taken as an axiom in the Christian
life that all our^best and most strengthening
experiences come to us when alone with God.
Jacob was thus alone when, at Peniel, he
wrestled with the angel, and got his new name,
Israel, and could then go out to meet his
angry brother Esau without any fear.

BEING ALONE WITH GOD 153
Moses was alone with God in the Midian
desert, when the voice of the Great I AM com
missioned him and fitted him to be the leader
of his whole nation out of bondage into rest.
It was also from lonely fellowship with God
in "the secret place of thundering" on Sinai's
top, that he brought away the wondrous glory
on his shining face that awed the people into
obedience to Him from whose radiant Presence
he so unmistakably had come.
Elijah was alone with God at Horeb when,
after being humbled to the dust, he was girt
with a strength for his great work such as
he never had before.
It was when alone with God in the silent
spaces of the Syrian deserts that John the
Baptist was endowed with the wondrous
power that made his preaching of repentance
bend the multitudes as trees are bent by a
winter's gale.
It was in the still deeper solitudes of Arabia
that Paul, alone with God, away from all dis
turbing old associations, away from all human
teaching, listening only to the voice of God,

154 STRENGTH RENEWED BY
was trained to become the noblest Apostle of
the Cross.
It was in the solitude of intercourse with
Christ on the Isle of Patmos, that the beloved
disciple John got his wondrous visions of things
to come. Shut out from the noisy world by
the dividing sea, shut in with Christ, he saw
what no other eye had ever seen, and heard
what no other ear could hear.
And was not the Lord Jesus Himself prepared
for His great redeeming work, not only by
those forty days in the wilderness where He
was "alone with the wild beasts," but also by
His continuously-sought fellowship with the
Father on lonely mountain-tops in the silence
of the night, "the morning star finding Him
where the evening star had left Him — on
bended knees"?
To us also all our best experiences come
when we are alone with God. There are
sorrows which we can surmount in no other
place. Grief is of many kinds, but all grief
that is really terrible and heart-crushing sends
us into speechless solitude to weep it out

BEING ALONE WITH GOD 155
upon the heart of God. There are temptations
which can be overcome only when alone with
Him. The fight with the great adversary is
a single combat after all. And there are deep
joys that can come into us only when alone
with God, the joy of feeling Christ's personal
love, the joy of finding His strength made
perfect in our weakness, the joy of bringing
our empty vessels to the Divine fulness of His
grace, waiting till he fills them, and seeing
them overflow. For quickening faith, intensi
fying love, and renewing strength, there is
no place like "the secret of His Presence."
Strange and sad that we do not seek it more !
For the strength will not come to us with
out our going deep to find it. A few hasty
and lazy prayers will never bring it into us.
We need deep communion with Christ if we
are to get it at all. There is no part of a
tree so invisible as its roots : but none more
essential to its growth and fruitfulness : and
just as the visible condition of the tree is an
unfailing index of what the unseen roots are
doing, our visible lives will soon tell whether

156 STRENGTH RENEWED BY
or not our invisible roots are going deep: for
dryness below ground soon means deadness
above ground.
Jeremiah explains the vigour and fruitful
ness of God's trees by a most suggestive meta
phor, "They send forth their roots to the
river." God provides the water: and there is
more than enough of it for our need : it is
a "river"— but we have to "send forth our
roots" in search of it. Large trees can sur
vive a drought that withers smaller ones,
because their roots go deep, and find sources
of moisture that are never dry : and a strong,
well-nourished Christian is proof against
temptations and trials that wither feebler
souls, just because his roots go deep into the
water of life. He draws strength out of
deep heart-intercourse with God, out of the
secret study of the Word, out of private
prayer ; but these things he has to seek : he
must go in search of the water, for the water
will not come to him.
There is a celebrated vine at Hampton
Court that for many years disappointed the

BEING ALONE WITH GOD 157
gardener's hopes. It was quite healthy, but
there were few grapes. One year, however,
it was unexpectedly laden with clusters of the
finest fruit. Seeking to discover the cause of
this, the gardener laid bare its roots, and
traced their ramifications, and found that they
had suddenly gone through the banks into the
river Thames. It had " sent forth its roots to
the river," and thenceforth "ceased not from
yielding fruit." That is a parable for all of us.
If we are to bear fruit in large abundance
we must get access to the hidden resources of
God's grace that are waiting for us to tap —
and that is a secret process, a secret between
us and God alone. Without this deep fellow
ship, this secret communion with the Unseen,
there will be no growth for any of us : but
with this, and because of this, there will be
abundant fruit — fruit even to old age. And
He who is the Unseen Giver of what we un
seen receive will be glorified in us who are
thus "enriched by Him unto ah bountiful-
ness, causing through ua thanksgiving unto
Him."

WE ARE LIFTED EASILY ABOVE LIFE'S
DISCOURAGEMENTS WHEN ALONE
WITH GOD

" How good it is when, weaned from all beside,
With God alone the heart is satisfied!
How good the heart's still chamber thus to close
On all but God alone,
There, in the sweetness of His love' repose,
His love unknown 1
To hear His voice amid the stillness blest,
And lay me down upon His arm to rest 1 "
Tersteegen.

XV
WE ARE LIFTED EASILY ABOVE LIFE'S
DISCOURAGEMENTS WHEN ALONE
WITH GOD
r I 10 be always hopeful and courageous in
depressing circumstances is not an easy
thing. The discipline of life seems often very
hard; and we rebel against it, not because of
its hardness alone, but because much of it
seems so unnecessary. Sometimes it is the
pettiness of our ordinary life that weighs us
down : and sometimes it is the disappointing
ineffectiveness of our efforts to serve God
worthily. Our ordinary concerns look so poor
and mean that we long to be free from them,
so as to spend life in a nobler way ; but we
cannot get free : we are chained to the
12 1<a

162 LIFE'S DISCOURAGEMENTS VANISH
drudgery ; we cannot rise. " This endless
struggle just to hve," we say-, "this weary
round of uncongenial work day after day, this
endless buying and selling, this ceaseless toil
of mere housekeeping, this narrowing down
of my thoughts to the petty details of food
and clothing; this irksome monotony of life,
where I have the same small things to attend
to day after day, all the year through, unable
to get above them or devote my energies to
loftier things— why does God tie me down to
a life like this? Why does He not give me
work to do in which I could better serve
Him, and at the same time better satisfy
my own idea of what a noble life ought to
be?" If we take such questionings to God in the
still hour of meditation and prayer, however,
we shall get His answer to them clear enough,
just as He gave it to Israel by Moses long
ago. He will tell us that what we call the
drudgery of our common days is meant to do
two great things that are absolutely indis
pensable, first "to humble us," and next "to

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 163
prove us, and to see whether we will keep
His commandments or no."
It needs not only Divine teaching, but Divine
discipline in addition to the teaching, to make
us content with faithfulness in very lowly
things, instead of complaining that we have
not greater things to do. We are eager to
do great things. Our pride and self-com
placency are flattered by our having large
services demanded of us. And God under
stands us well, and therefore seeks to purge us
of this pride by giving us only comlnon and
humble things to do, that ostentation may not
tempt the heart.
But the discipline is also meant "to prove
us " whether we will keep His commandments
or no " ; to see whether we are seeking simply
to do His will, and are not pursuing our own.
There is hardly one man in a thousand who
sets himself steadily and humbly just to do
the will of God with no ulterior aims whatso
ever. If we all did that, there would not be
a single unhappy heart in the world ! In our
impassioned longings for some other kinds of

164 LIFE'S DISCOURAGEMENTS VANISH
life than what is God's present will concern
ing us we are living in the region of dreams;
and men are not sanctified by dreams, but by
battles. When that old people of Israel listen
ing to God at the fiery mount had a bright
vision of the great and noble life they would
enter on ere long, they thrilled with devotion
to Him, and vowed perfect obedience to His
will in everything. But how long was it till
they were bitterly complaining of the tire
some and poor monotony of those wanderings
in the desert by which the vision was to be
realised ? And where are our vows of obedience
too? Where are our professions of living only
according to His will? To have bright visions
of what a noble thing life might be made to
be is not to make it so. But all the time we
are looking at our dream-pictures, God is
taking a better way with us, though we see
not what His meaning is — training us to
humble faithfulness by the seeming drudgery
of commonplace duties in an uncongenial
sphere : and He shows us this as soon as we
get alone with Him.

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 165
There is another and a keener discourage-
ment^ too, over which nothing can hft us so
easily and so completely as a quiet talk with
God — the discouragement arising not from the
pettiness of our lives, but from our disappj^mt-
ing ineffectiveness and want of success in
working for God's righteousness in the world.
The discouragement grows often into despair,
and we cry, "Oh that I had wings like a
dove, then would I fly away and be at rest ! "
That was the cry of a thoroughly dispirited
man, yet not a worldly man, nor a man
simply saddened by accumulating sorrows ;
rather, a man weary with the vain struggle
against the opposing forces of evil, a man
striving to fight against the sin around him,
and to put down iniquity, yet finding his
efforts thwarted on every hand, -and almost
giving up the battle in despair, saying bitterly,
"I have spent my strength for nought and in
vain. Can God mean that His work shall be
only pain to me and defeat? Has He nothing
better to give me than this?"
There are many such hearts in the world

166 LIFE'S DISCOURAGEMENTS VANISH
to-day; earnest Christian hearts, zealous for
God, yet saddened by the feeling that all their
efforts are in vain; not world-weary, nor sin-
weary, nor sorrow-weary, but battle- weary ;
looking at the difficulties on every side,
thinking of their own weakness to stem the
rushing tide of evil, and looking forward to
the long-drawn fight that is before them still,
tiU their courage fails, and they shrink from
the depressing prospect of useless battle to
the very last. For it is not the sharpness of
the conflict, but the weary length of it, that
often makes the heart give Way. It is the
never-endingness of the fight, the hopelessness
of anticipating any triumphant close, that
makes so many who are really soldiers of
the King cry, "Oh that I had wings like a
dove, to fly away and be at rest!" and who
that feels any true sympathy with Christ in
His mission to the world can help being some
times depressed by the seeming futility of all
the means used by faith and love to gain the
world for Him?
But now let this depression be not nursed

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 167
in the brooding mind, but taken into the secret
place of communion with God, and how soon
a different complexion is put upon the circum
stances that cause it! What has He to say
about it? What is His answer to the weary
sigh? It is just to think of Christ. Who had
ever so sore a fight as He, or more dis
couragements than He? Who ever kept up
the fight to the very last as He ? It was said
of Him before He came, "He shall not fail
nor be discouraged till He have set judgment
in the earth," and He has fulfilled the pro
phecy. He has been waiting for His victory
for nineteen hundred years, and is waiting for
it yet, but waiting undiscouraged as well as
undismayed, " expecting till His enemies be
made His footstool." The unfailing and un-
fainting hopefulness of Jesus Christ may
shame us out of our discouragement while
following Him as " fellow- workers with Him
unto the Kingdom of God." The one answer
to all our despondency is — Christ. If He had
spoken as we so often speak, and felt as we
so often feel; if He, seeing how small His

168 LIFE'S DISCOURAGEMENTS VANISH
success was, had folded His weary hands
and given up the conflict, what then? And
what was His review of His hfe when
almost done ? "I have glorified Thee upon
the earth, I have finished the work Thou
gavest me to do." That was all, but that
was enough. Can any of us wish to be able
to say more ? " Oh for wings," we cry, " to
fly away and be at rest ! " But if Christ had
said that, where would our redemption have
been? Wings await us only as they awaited
Him — only when, like Him, we have finished
the work given us to do, and have fought out
the battle to the end. Armour now ; wings, if
we are patient, we shall find in due time.
Yet, even meanwhile, the blessings of " wings "
is not always denied; not wings with which
to escape all troubles, but wings with which
to rise above them. " Theyjhat^ wait upon
the Lord shall mount up on wings_as eagles ;
they shall "run and not be weary, they shall
walk and not faint." That is not a promise
for the far-distant future. It is a promise
for the present; and each part of it will be

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 169
at one time or another, fulfiUed to the "wait
ing" heart. There will be soaring days, when
we get so high above the world that we can
feel as if we had parted company for even
with its sorrows and its temptations, when we\
can not only outrun the vexations of life, but
outfly them, and feel as if they did not exist.
God means us sometimes to have hours like
these ; but they are not the ordinary expe
rience even of the best of men. The ordinary
experience is a lower, and yet equally com
forting one — the fulfilment of the other part
of the promise, "They shah run and not be
weary; they shall walk and not faint." Not
so ecstatic an experience as the soaring, but
quite as useful and possibly more safe, is this
humbler experience given to those who know
that they have no might in themselves, and
wait for God's might to strengthen them.
And the order of these three promises is to
be noted well, for they are often fulfilled to us
just in that order and no other. It may seem
strange that the loftiest attainment should be
put first and the lower last; but this order is

170 LIFE'S DISCOURAGEMENTS VANISH
the true one for all that. The soaring days
of every Christian generally come at an early
stage. At the wonderful time of his "first
love," his first experience of the riches of
Divine grace, his conversion days, he often
rises wonderfully high above the world.
Never, indeed, does he feel so completely
loosed from its thrall, never does he rise to
such a height both of joy and of surrender;
his glowing feelings seem then to carry him
up to the very gates of heaven.
But soon he has to come down from his
ecstasies because God calls him to battle and
service below, and then he learns to be thank
ful if only he can " run with patience the race
set before him."
And later still he is humbler still. A larger
experience of the world and of himself shows
him that constant "running" even is a thing
he cannot keep up. He is thankful then if he
can but "walk" with God, leaning upon His
everlasting arm, till he comes to the dark
valley at the end of the pilgrim way, and
finds that there is no soaring over it, nor

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 171
running through it. He is glad of the Lord's
staff to keep him from falling, and will only
say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death I will fear no evil."
But as he goes leaning on God he finds that
God's strength gives him the victory as
completely as when he was able to soar.
Now, the manifold discouragements of life
are sure to oppress us terribly so long as we
are merely alone with ourselves, and brooding
over them; but they will quickly disappear
when we are alone with God; for then we
look upon them with His eyes, weigh them
in His balances, measure them by His tests ;
and as we review them in His light there
comes into us a great hope, a great courage,
and a great peace.

WE DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF ALL
POWER FOR SERVICE WHEN WE
ARE ALONE WITH GOD

" A moment from this outward life,
Its service, self-denial, strife,
I joyfully retreat:
My soul, through intercourse with Thee,
Strengthened, refreshed, and calm shall be,
The world again to meet."
" The Changed Ceoss."
'• Oh ! to be but emptier, lowlier,
All unnoticed and unknown;
But to God a vessel holier,
Filled with Christ, and Christ alone."
P. Gebhabdt.

XVI
WE DISCOVER THE SOURCE OF ALL
POWER FOR SERVICE WHEN WE
ARE ALONE WITH GOD
TF we are discouraged by our conscious in-
efficiency as witnesses to God and workers
for God in the world, we must, before all else,
discover the cause of our inefficiency: yet this
is what we find it often difficult to know.
Our weakness we painfully feel. Others see
it as well as ourselves; but what the cause
of it may be, or how to get it removed, we
cannot tell.
There is only one place where these questions
will be solved — the secret place where we lay
ourselves freely open to God's searching eye,
and where we wait longingly and humbly to
its

176 POWER FOR SERVICE
hear what He has to say: and the solution
gained there will probably be this, that, while
we are complaining that we are too weak to
do much for God, He shows us that, in reality,
we are too strong for Him to use; we do not
feel weak enough, or so conscious of our own
weakness, as to cast away every rag of our
own self-sufficiency, and wait for the power
of God Himself to come upon us, and qualify
us for serving Him. We need to have Divine
power, and not our own human power, behind
all the actings of the hfe, and ah the words
of the lip. We need to have this Divine
power pouring into us if it is to pour forth
from us again : and this inpouring of Divine
power is given only when we are in stillness
waiting for it, and pleading for it, and claiming
it from the Lord according to His promise.
Let our natural powers of mind or tongue be
what they may, we are quite unfit for serving
God till the power of His Spirit comes upon
us to consecrate the power that belongs to
ourselves. Indeed, till this Divine power comes,
we have really no power of our own for any

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 177
spiritual work, even the smallest and humblest
of all. But we almost never realise this
thoroughly ; and consequently, it is not our
weakness but our fancied strength that is the
great hindrance to our being used by God.
All dependence upon our own wisdom, our
own talents, our own inteUectual grasp, our
own powers of argument or persuasion or
appeal, ignores the fundamental truth that
"our sufficiency is from Him."
When a_steaniship Jhas ^grounded on the
t " " "~  —  — — ^
sand bar at a river's mouth, its own power is
valueless for moving it. So far from helping
it, the energy of its own machinery will only
strain and injure it. What then? It must
wait for God's power, the power of the rising
tide. That great uplifting force will do easily
and quickly what its own internal power cannot
do; and this is but a parable of human help
lessness waiting for the power that is Divine.
How many a preacher knows that this is
his only resource ! How often, when he
thought his prepared message as powerful as
reasoning and oratory could make it to be, it
13

178 POWER FOR SERVICE
was utterly useless, and had no real spiritual
effect on a single hearer's soul ! but when he
painfully felt his own utter weakness, and
was willing to be only the channel along
which a Divine power should flow, even though
his message seemed to himself so poor that
he was half ashamed to speak it, God did use
him as he had never been used before! All
our natural powers can be used mightily by
God; but only when we think nothing of
them, and surrender ourselves to be simply the
vehicles of Divine power, letting God use us as
He wills, content to be even despised by men if
He be glorified.
It may be said, therefore, with confidence,
that the cause of our inefficiency in God's
service is threefold. First, we are not still
enough for God to come to us. Secondly, we
are not empty enough for God to fill us. Thirdly,
we are not sanctified enough for God to use and
honour us.
There are two suggestive Scripture meta
phors, among many others, that show this
very clearly. One of these is that which

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 179
likens the coming down of the Holy Spirit
upon us to the falling of the dew. Another is
that which hkens the Christian to a vessel
fashioned by the Lord Himself, to be filled by
Himself, and used in whatsoever way He Him
self may choose.
1. We need to be still enough for God to
come to us. The gracious influence of the
Holy Spirit faUs upon the soul just as the
dew falls in the stillness of the night upon
the drooping plant. The plant cannot make
the dew: it can only wait for it, and attract
it. The dew is always close beside it, suspended
in the atmosphere ; but it does not fall unless
two conditions are fulfilled — the air must be
still, and the plant must be cool. We need much
quiet stillness of soul if the grace of the Spirit
is to come down out of heaven and revive us ;
and the fever-heat of life, too, must be suffered
to abate, for the blessed baptism, giving power
from on high, can descend only when the heart
is cooled as weU as still.
2. Then, again, we need to be empty enough
for God to fill us. Paul, writing to Timothy,

180 POWER FOR SERVICE
gives in a beautiful way God's idea of what
every true and faithful Christian ought to be,
"a vessel unto honour, sanctified and meet for
the Master's use, and prepared to every good
work." The metaphor is a very exalting one,
but a very humbling one as well. It tells us
the high dignity to which we are called — to
be " vessels to honour " in the Lord's " great
house." It tells us what our high service in
the great house is to be — " prepared unto every
good work." But it tells us also what in a
moment takes down any pride of self-suffi
ciency — that we are only "vessels," that God
fashions us as it pleases Him, and uses us as
it pleases Him, that we have nothing of our
own, but are merely His vehicles for receiving
and carrying and distributing what He fills us
with. But the difficulty and the hindrance on our
side often is that we are not willing to be this
and nothing more. We are not always self-
emptied enough to let the " Master " of the
"great house" put into us what He wills, and
use us as He wills. It is a wonderful honour

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 181
to be vessels in His hand. It is altogether
marvellous grace that can take what were
once only "vessels of wrath," transform them
into "vessels of mercy,'' and then make of
these vessels of mercy " vessels to honour,"
vessels fit for the noblest use, vessels filled
with the grace which they may carry to other
souls. But do we realise that, after all, we
are only vessels — vessels of various sizes, some
of them "vessels of cups," and others "vessels
of flagons" — vessels of different make, some of
them plain and unadorned, others enriched
with carving and colouring of the finest kind
— vessels of different materials, some of "gold
and silver," others of "wood and earth" —
vessels to be employed in different ways, some
of larger usefulness than others, some con
stantly in use, others in use only at occasional
times — but all of them only vessels, empty
vessels till He fills them, vessels to be used by
Him in any way He thinks best, or to be laid
aside upon the shelf if He has no present use
to put them to? Do we always realise and
consent to this? Do we not sometimes feel

182 POWER FOR SERVICE
perfectly whling to be His vessels, if only He
will make us great enough and ornamental
enough to satisfy ourselves; if only He will
fill us with all aromatic spices instead of
common water ; but not willing to be of
meaner make, or to be used in a less self-
glorifying way?
3. We need to be holy enough for God to
honour us. " Vessels unto honour " are " sancti
fied" vessels, vessels "purged" of evil within,
vessels hallowed and consecrated for His service
alone. This is the most essential characteristic
of ah. How can the Lord of purity use un-
cleansed vessels when He wants to carry in
them the " pure water of hfe " to some thirsty
lip, or the wine of the kingdom to some fainting
heart ?
The measure of our Christian power is just
the measure of our Christian consecration. A
single unmortified lust, whether of the flesh
or of the spirit, a single besetting sin tolerated
in heart or hfe, will hinder all our usefulness
to God, even though we be vessels of the most
beautiful ornamentation and of the finest make.

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 183
" Take away the dross from the silver, and
there shall come forth a vessel for the refiner,"
is one of Solomon's pithy sayings; and in its
spiritual apphcation it goes very deep. Does
it not mean, " Take away all conscious defile
ment from soul and life, and then, as hallowed
vessels, God will be able to use you for His
praise"? It was a law for ancient Israel that
they should " bring an offering in a clean vessel
into the house of the Lord." If unclean, it
would be only " a vessel in which is no
pleasure," and the offering within it would not
be accepted at His hands. That law is one
that still stands unrepealed in the statute-book
of Christ.
These are some of God's answers to our
questionings about inefficiency in service, and
they are sufficient to be both a rebuke and a
stimulus when we listen to them in the secret
place where alone they can be heard. It was
just at the very time when Saul of Tarsus was
in the depths of self-condemnation and self-
despair, utterly emptied of all his former self-
sufficiency, that the Lord Jesus said of him to

184 POWER FOR SERVICE
Ananias, "He is a chosen vessel unto Me, to
bear My name before the Gentiles and kings,
and the people of Israel." If we could only
begin with a self-emptying as he did, might
we not end where he did too, "filled with the
Holy Ghost"?

OUR HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS ARE INTEN
SIFIED WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH
GOD

"Nearer yet, 0 Christ, still nearer
To Thy heart of Love 1
Lift me higher, knit me closer
To the things above 1
Fuller still, 0 Christ, still fuller
Be my joy in Thee!
Stronger every day, still stronger
Thy rich grace in me !
Clearer yet, 0 Christ, still clearer
Be the vision fair
Of the holy unsoiled garments
Saints in glory wear I
Holier still, 0 Christ, still holier
Be my walk below!
Help me onward, raise me upward
Liter them to grow.
Brighter yet, 0 Christ, still brighter
I for Thee would shine.
Make me now, and make me ever,
Altogether Thine."
Anon.

XVII
OUR HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS ARE INTEN
SIFIED WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH
GOD
/^VNE of the great discoveries we make when
^^^ we rise for a little while above the blind
ing and depressing mists of life's anxieties
and cares to the serene pure air of the moun
tain-top in the secret place, is that ordinarily
we are living much lower down than we
might live and ought to live; that we do not
appropriate the fulness of God's grace as we
might do; that we might be far happier and
far hoher than we generally are. It is in the
quiet of the still hour that we hear most
distinctly the call to seek a higher life, a life
187

188 HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS INTENSIFIED
of higher experience, of higher aims, and
therefore of higher joys.
We ought to rise higher in experience. How
much of the fulness of Divine grace we know
almost nothing of ! How much belongs to us
in Christ that we have never claimed as per
sonally our own! To say that it is the privi
lege of every Christian to enjoy to the utmost
the blessings that flow to him from his union
to Christ is not to say enough. It is more
than his privilege. It is his duty as well.
We not only may be, but ought to be,
" strengthened with all might by His Spirit
in the inner man," "abounding in hope,"
"kept in perfect peace." But do we really
seek this ? Do we actually attain it ? Is it
uncharitable to say that most Christians are
only barely alive ? Their spiritual pulse is
feeble; their spiritual progress is slow; their
spiritual victories are few; their spiritual joys
are poor. There is no vigour in their faith.
If they see at all it is only dimly. The full
sunshine they never know. The clouds hang
always low and trail heavily across their sky.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 189
This poor and meagre experience is certainly
better than no experience of grace at all ; just
as a sick man is better than a, dead man.
But when Christ comes to do His saving work
upon us, He does not restore us from death
to sickliness ; He restores from death to the
fulness of happy life. Why do we not enjoy
the assured position He gives us ? Why do we
walk so often with drooping face and down
cast eye when Christ has risen a Conqueror,
to make us sharers in His triumph over sin
and death and hell ? Looking upon our gloom-
covered faces, listening to our cheerless, half-
faithless tones, who would ever dream that
we were the heirs of a glorious liberty
obtained for us by the Christ who died, and
rose again, and lives for evermore?
When Jesus came out of the^raye_He^^id
not bring the grave-clothes with_Him. Lazarus
did, and manyj)hristians do. They walk about
really "risen," but with the smell of the
sepulchre clinging to their garments. They
have "life," but they have not "liberty." The
reality of life they have, but the joyousness

190 HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS INTENSIFIED
of the new life they do not show. Why
should it be so ? The f ull peace He gives we
need for our own soul's sake; and we need it
for the sake of our power to win the world.
We cannot by our life tell powerfully upon
others if we are onhj_ gasping for life our-
selves. The well of peace within ourselves
must be full to the brim before it can over
flow in blessing alljiround. We cannot draw
others out of the pit of gloom if we ourselves,
though a little higher up than they, are still
trembhng in precarious safety as we cling to
the slippery stones.
It is good to be penitents at God's feet, but
it is better to be consciously restored peni
tents lying in the Father's arms. Tears for
sin are good, but praise for the Hand that
wipes the tears away is better. The cry of
the publican, " God be merciful to me a
sinner," was good, but the song in his heart
as he "went down to his house justified"
was better still, It is good to "sit down in
the lowest room," as though unworthy of a
higher place, but better far to hear the Master

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 191
say, "Friend, go up higher," and then "to sit
with Him in heavenly places" without any
misgiving as to our right to be there.
A large number of earnest -minded Chris
tians do long to be able to rise to this, but
their deeply-felt unworthiness of it is a diffi
culty they cannot surmount. That is just
because they are living too far from the
Christ in whom they faintly trust. If we
understood more fully, the reason of His love,
we would see that it is quite independent of
our worthiness to receive it. Discoveries of

our sinfulness may take us by surprise, but our
sinfulness is no surprise to Him. He knew
from the very first what our unworthiness, in
all its length and breadth, would be, and yet
He loved us — loved us for reasons in Himself
alone. So, then, if He began to love_us f or
Hisjpwn. sake, not for ours^_He__caJi_go„ on
loving jis_JoJL-His__ojvn^ake_still. If He had
loved us at our best, and came to be dis
appointed in us, His love might grow cold and
even cease altogether. But He loved us at our
very worst, loved us when "dead in sin>" loved

192 HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS INTENSIFIED
us knowing all we would turn out to be ; and
the one word " grace " explains the wonderful
fact. Our hope rests not upon our own stead
fastness in faith and perseverance in holy
living, but on unchanging everlasting grace ;
the same grace that began in love ending in
love as well.
We ought to rise higher in expectancy too.
" Grace after grace " is what He promises,
but only "according to our faith" will the
grace be given; and they who bring the
largest pitchers to the fountain take the largest
blessing away. The less we expect from the
world the better; the less we expect from
ourselves the better; but the more we expect
from God, the richer, the hoher, the happier
we are sure to be. Surely He must take it ill
that we expect so little when He says, "Open
thy mouth wide and I will fill it." We ought
to expect to have every one of His promises
fulfilled to us, however great it be ; and what
we need for that is not a stronger faith so
much as a faith that is simpler and more
childlike.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 193
Above all, we need to rise higher in fellow
ship with God. This is " a high hill as the hill
of Bashan," but none can climb too high upon
it. What a wonderful elasticity of spirits is
felt by one who has got to the crown of
some grey peak ! what a feeling of utter calm
and of superiority to things below! We pity
those who have never felt the exhilaration of
the mountain air. Any one who gets high up
upon the holy hill of fellowship with God is
sure to feel the same. If the cares of the
lower world disturb us, we have but to climb
this hill and we are at once in the serene
calm of heaven — a calm that neither care nor
sorrow can invade. If the temptations of the
world overpower us, it is because we are living
too far down. If higher up we would be
beyond the tempter's voice.
High fellowship with God will make us
radiant too as well as calm and safe. The
hght of heaven will linger longer on our
souls. In the Alps, when darkness has crept
down into all the valleys, bright light can be
seen bathing the giant peaks that catch the
14

194 HOLIEST ASPIRATIONS INTENSIFIED
glory of the descending sun, and retain, when
lower ones have lost it, the glow of its ex
piring flame. Then, when the glow has fled
from even the loftiest pinnacles of ice, it can
be seen reddening the clouds that are higher
yet, till they look like the garments of angels
flung off upon the golden sky. These also lose
their light ere long ; but if we could ascend
beyond every cloud, and beyond the shadow of
the earth itself, we should have the full sun
shine always without a break.
So if we want our souls to be transfigured,
and our lives ennobled by the perpetual sun
shine of God's presence, where no sorrow can
enshroud us and no sin can hve, we have but
to seek higher fellowship with Him in His
secret place, and live more delightedly among
"the things that are above."

THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD

Welcome, dear Book 1 souls' joy and food,
In thee the hidden stone, the manna lies;
The key that opens to all mysteries
The Word in characters, God in the Voice."
H. Vaughan.

"Tree of life, thy golden-fruited
Branches shade as well as feed,
By the stilly waters rooted;
And thy very leaves drop healing
Medicine in my hours of need.
When my soul is ve^ed with sorrow
Like a sea, it groweth calm
When thou speakest; Hope's to-morrow
Cheers to-day, and to my trouble
Thou art soothing balm.
Paradise of fadeless pleasure,
Stored with mines of wealth untold,
Ind is not so full of treasure,
Ophir is not richer: thou art
More to me than gold." Rev. Bichaed Glover.

XVIII
THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD
1~N the secret place we need to do far more
than speak to God. We need to listen as
He speaks to us : and we hear His voice in
the Sacred Word which conveys a message
from Him to every one who "has ears to
hear," Do we really prize this book of God
as we ought? Do we reaUy know it? Do
we treat it as He means it to be treated?
Do we make it our souls' daily food?
Few things are more amazing than the
ignorance of this blessed Book that is dis
coverable in thousands who caU themselves
by the Christian name. It is no breach of
charity to say that there are multitudes in all
197

198 THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
the Churches who never open their Bibles
except once a week in the house of worship,
and even there betray by unmistakable signs
how ignorant of its contents they are. They
would be ashamed to be as ignorant of the
newspaper or of the last novel as they are of
the Word of God. An allusion to Bible-story
has more than once set half of the House of
Commons wondering where it came from.
We can easily tell, when talking with any one
about Divine things, whether he has much
converse with the Divine Book or not. Men
of the world, keen, well-educated, well-read in
current and ancient literature, skilled in many
abstruse departments of human research, often
make fools of themselves when they talk about
spiritual idealities ; and that simply because
they never read the only book that speaks
authoritatively about these realities. The
Bible is not only a sealed book to them, it is
like a dead book altogether.
These days of ours are far less Bible-search
ing days than former ones, even within our
recollection, were. Religious literature, not to

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 199
speak of secular, has come almost to displace
the Bible, even in Christian homes. Family
reading of the Bible, and instruction in it, is
getting to be a thing of the past; and from
this, more than anything else, comes the
current laxity of belief and of practice too.
We are sometimes told that we make too
much of the Bible : that we worship it too
much: and that idolatry of the Bible is as
pernicious as idolatry of anything else : and
in saying this, it is implied that this is a too
common state of things. But where are they,
these idolaters? One would like to discover
them, that he might go and live amongst
them! For most men seem to make far too
little of the Bible instead of too much. They
read it too little ; they study it too little ; they
believe it too little; they practise it too little.
One would travel a long way to see a real
idolater of the Bible ; for there are not many
of them near at hand!
To many the Bible is merely an antiquarian
museum of curiosities ; to others merely a
storehouse of weapons for controversy. Some

200 THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
read it critically; some read it sceptically;
some read it mechanically as if performing a
task. How few read it as children in a far
country listening to a letter from home ! If
it is to be of any real use to us, we must
take it as God meant it to be taken, as bread
for our hunger and water for our thirst, as
medicine for our sicknesses and balm for our
bruises, as a staff for our weariness, a spur
for our indolence, a hght for our darkness, a
comforter in our sadness, a polestar for our
wanderings, a lamp for our feet.
Of all these uses the most essential is the
first. We need this Divine Word as the food
by which alone our spiritual life can be sus
tained and grow. Many an enfeebled and
diseased condition of body is accounted for
simply by "insufficient nourishment"; and all
spiritual energy and even vitality depends
upon spiritual nutrition. Wherever we see a
feeble Christian, we may be sure he is suffer
ing from "lack of bread": and the two things
needed for bodily nutrition are needed also for
the nutrition of the soul.

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 201
One of these is a personal appropriation of
the food. So long as the food remains outside
of us — a thing to be looked at and admired,
but not tasted — it does us no good. It must
be taken in. "Thy words were found," says
Jeremiah, "and I did eat them, and they were
to me the rejoicing of my heart." We cannot
eat by proxy. Eating must be our own
personal food-appropriating act.
Then follows a further process — the incor-
poration of the food with the substance of the
bodily frame. The food converted into flesh
and blood reappears in the bright eye, the
healthy complexion, the flexible muscle, the
firm bone, the well-strung nerves, the active
brain: and if the Word of God is really
appropriated, it becomes incorporated too, and
reappears in "love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temper
ance," and all the other characteristics of a
strong and healthy soul.
Ah of us, without exception, need daily
food: the old as well as the young, the strong
as well as the weak, the king as well as the

202 THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
beggar (for " the king himself is served by the
field"), the philosopher as well as the child.
And the act by which life is nourished is as
simple in the case of the philosopher as in
the case of the child. If the wise man will
not stoop to that simple act, he will die as
surely as the child will who refuses food. And
there is no man, however learned or however
great, that can keep in spiritual health for a
day if he will not nourish himself by the bread
that endureth to everlasting life.
But no hasty, indifferent, surface-reading of
the Divine Book will give any nourishment to
the soul. An ancient Bible-lover said, "I will
meditate upon Thy statutes." That is some
thing deeper than merely listening to them.
We need to ponder them till they are felt to
be distinct personal messages from God: and
as Augustine said, comparing the Bible to the
water of life, "there are first draughts, and
second draughts, and third draughts of this
water to be enjoyed." It is often only the
third, and even the fourth, draught that proves
how sweet and how refreshing it is. But this

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 203
"meditation" needs silence. "Only in the
sacredness of silence does the soul truly meet
with the secret, hiding God," the God who
reveals Himself in the Word, but also veils
Himself under it, and can be seen only when
the veil is thinned to transparency by that
heavenly light that, like the mystic light of
the Holy of Holies, shines only in "the secret
place of the Most High."
What "meditation" does can be seen in such
glad utterances as these : " Oh ! how I love
Thy law!" "It makes me wiser than ah my
teachers." " It is sweeter to my taste than
the honeycomb." " It is better to me than
thousands of gold and silver." And every
humble, spirit-taught lover of Scripture still
will heartily echo these words. But love for
the Word will grow as our experience grows.
There is much in it we never see till our own
experience of life makes it a living book to
us: and just as a letter written in "sym
pathetic" ink is illegible till exposed to the
heat of the fire, many of God's wonderful
messages are never understood till the fire of

204 THE BREAD OF LIFE IS SWEETEST
suffering brings out the message clearly to the
eye of faith. Many a man has never known
what the Bible can do for him till he has
taken it down and read it tearfuhy on some
dark day when the light of his home was
gone, and by the fireside there was only an
empty chair.
This is our own human experience; but was
there ever one who knew the Scriptures better,
and more delighted in them than Christ Jesus
did? They were more deeply in His heart
and oftener on His lips than any other had
them before or since. And yet He never
possessed a copy of His own ! Scarce any
child in a Christian home but has a Bible of
his own. We have all our favourite copies,
and delight to mark them with, our private
marks, and carry them ^bout with us for
constant reference. Christ had no such pocket-
Bible to carry about with Him, and yet no one
knew it as He did. He had spent many an
hour in the synagogues reading the copies
that were there, and His holy memory did the
rest, till He knew it so well that He never

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 205
hesitated for a moment in using it either to
defeat His foes, or to enlighten His disciples,
or to comfort Himself: and it has been well
said that " it is pecuharly enjoyable, in reading
the Bible, to halt- at some text, and know for
certain by His quoting it, that out of the very
vessel we are raising to our lips He Himself
once drank the hving water."
If any one could have dispensed with the
Scriptures, He could, but none ever hved upon
them more. He found everywhere in them
His own portrait drawn — the Holy One, the
humbled One, the rejected One, the crucified
yet rising One, the suffering and thereafter
glorified One; and He gave Himself to fulfil
ah that was written of Him there. We too
must find our portrait in the Scriptures, the
picture of what we are in our deformity and
sin, the picture also of what God means us,
through His transforming grace, to become :
and we have to set ourselves to fulfil the high
ideal of a sanctified life that is presented
there. When we use the Scriptures as Christ
did, they will do for us what they did for Him.

206 THE BREAD OF LIFE
But for this sanctifying look into the Divine
Word we do need the quiet of a silent hour.
The full sweetness of the hidden manna can
be tasted only when we are alone with God.
Reading and pondering it there, we will find
that, whether as an instructor in righteous
ness or as a comforter in sorrow, it has no
rival anywhere. Ah other books at last grow
insipid except this. It is the one book we
carry into the chamber of the dying and into
the home of the bereaved. If it were suddenly
taken out of the world altogether, what a
dismal void would be left in myriads of broken
hearts! What millions of feet would wander
into paths of deeper sin than have yet been
trod! Knowing that nothing can take its
place, our hands may well grasp it tighter
every day, and our souls ponder it with fresh
delight, till, in the light of God's secret heaven,
we see and understand it all.

ALL SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD

I come to Thee to-night,
In my lone closet where no eye can see,
And dare to seek communion high with Thee,
Father of love and light!
If I this day have striven,
With Thy blest Spirit, or have bowed the knee
To aught of earth in weak idolatry,
I pray to be forgiven.
If I have turned away
From grief or suffering which I might relieve
Careless the cup of water ev'n to give,
Forgive me, Lord, I pray!
Not for myself alone
Would I the blessings of Thy love implore ;
But for eaoh penitent the wide world o'er,
Whom Thou hast called Thine own.
And for my heart's best friends,
Whose stedfast kindness o'er my painful years,
Has watched, to soothe affliction's grief and tears,
My warmest prayer ascends.
Should o'er their path decline
The light of gladness, or of hope, or health,
Be Thou their solace, and their joy, and wealth,
As they have long been mine." Lyra Anglicana.

XIX
ALL SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD
r l THERE is another privilege connected with
the secret place of intercourse with God
which must not be overlooked, the privilege of
prayer for others as well as for ourselves. The
prayer-chamber is to be a place of large inter
cession ; and only if it be so is the full blessed
ness of it reached. Paradoxical seemingly, it
is yet true, that when most alone with God,
we must have many others beside us there.
We must take our friends and brethren
there ; we must take ah the sinful and
sorrowful there ; we must take the whole
Church there ; we must take the whole world
there, and speak to God in behalf of all of these
15 «»

210 SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
This is a much-forgotten duty, but it is a
greatly undervalued privilege as well.
God might certainly have limited our prayers
to ourselves, just as we have to repent for
ourselves, and beheve for ourselves. That He
allows intercessory prayer in addition to
personal prayer is, therefore, a proof of the
exceeding largeness of His loving heart, and
of His desire to enlist all our natural feelings
of sympathy on the side of His gracious
purpose to bless as widely as blessing can go.
For these intercessory prayers are a distinct
means of dVawmg_jdown_blessing where, with
out them, it_would not fall, or at_least_wpuld
be long delayed ; and in this way we can
reach many who are beyond reach of our
words, or who would resent the words if
uttered. The shortest way to many a heart
in whose spiritual well-being we are deeply
interested, but which constantly eludes our
efforts to reach it by even the tenderest
appeals, is round by the Throne of Grace,
where we ask God to do for it what we
cannot do. Hundreds of conversions and

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 211
restorations have resulted from such secret
prayers, prayers that those prayed for knew
nothing of.
And it is not only for such great spiritual
blessings to come to them that we ought to
intercede. In tender human sympathy we
ought to speak to God about th^h^every-day
life, their cares and dangers, their sorrows and
their joys, and ask that His hand may guide
them, His grace sustain them, His love eheer
them, His Spirit sanctify them, and His power
guard them from dangers we see close beside
them but they do not. Few things are more
delightful to a prayer-lover than thus to carry
with himself into the Father's presence every
friend he knows, to talk of every one by name,
to lay out before God their special needs ;
and so to link them closer to himself as well
as to his Lord by the sweet bond of prayer.
Such prayer for others^whJ^hvays_haye_a
salutary reflex influence upon ourselves. It
will lead to a deepening of our interest in
those for whom we pray, to wiser efforts for
them, and to a greater watchfulness over our-

212 SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
selves, lest anything in ourselves should hinder
the success of the prayer. And prayer for
ourselves may sometimes remain unanswered,
because it is selfish prayer. What Joseph said
to Jacob's other sons in Egypt, God may
sometimes say to us, "Ye shah not see My
face except your brother be with you." It is
significantly said at the end of the history of
Job, "The Lord turned the captivity of Job
when he prayed for his friends," the very
friends who had cruehy misjudged him, and
been bitter against him.
Then our secret prayer must take a wider
sweep and embrace ah the earth. We are to
be God's " remembrancers," who "give Him no
rest" till He has made His kingdom world
wide. It is for this that Christ is praying in
the secret heaven ; and we are to be " fellow-
workers with Him" in this as in so many
other ways. An ever-interceding Christ above,
and an ever-interceding discipleship below, are
to be joined together in unfainting prayer
till "His name is hallowed on earth as it is
hallowed in heaven, His kingdom is come on

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 213
earth as it is come in heaven, His will is done
on earth as it is done in heaven."
But all this is easy work for the prayer-
chamber compared with another that lies
equally upon us. To pray for personal relatives
and friends, for fehow-Christians, for the whole
Church, for the millions sunk in darkness and
ignorance and sadness, and superstition and
vice, is not so difficult as to pray Jovingly for
some living close beside us who treat us with
contempt or with malevolence, and daily do us
wrong. It might be thought the very extravagance
of charity to ask us to pray for our enemies,
our rivals, our detractors, our persecutors,

those whose eviltongues_spread slanderous
reportsconcerning us, whose bitter feelings
towards us are never disguised, whose cold
hatred meets us at every turn. But to pray
for these is one of the most distinct com
mands of Christ, "Pray for those that de-
spitefully use you and persecute you." He
knew well what He was saying when He gave
that command. He knew that it will be im-

214 SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
possible for us to reciprocate their hatred and
malevolence and contempt if we pray lovingly
for them. He knew that the quickest way of
overcoming their evil, and of preventing
feelings of anger against them from over
coming us, is to pray for them in the
spirit of Him who prayed for His very
murderers upon the Cross. A good man once
wrote in his journal these words: "Many a
one would never have had a special place in
my prayers but for the injuries he had done
to me." That was the very spirit of his Lord.
Wrathful feelings against those who treat us
ill will often prevent prayer for ourselves
being granted. "First be reconciled to thy
brother, then come and offer thy gift," is a
rule that may apply even to the presenting of
prayers at the mercy-seat. If, therefore, at any
time there seems to be a hiding of God's face,
and the door of access to Him seems shut
when we would enter in, let us try if the key
of intercession for others will not turn the lock.
Then, top^_the quiet_of the secret place jvill
help us to examine ourselves, to see if there

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 215
may not be reasons on our own side for the
r  ¦  ¦ 
ill-will in others of which we complain. If we
are able, in this secrecy with God, to correct
our too flattering judgments of ourselves, we
are also able there to correct our too harsh,
unsympathetic, and uncharitable judgments of
others. We may carry our feelings of irritation
against an offending brother to the door of the
secret place, but it wih be difficult to give them
house-room within it. It has a wonderfully
clarifying effect to look at what offends us in
the treatment meted out to us by others, or in
the feelings we suspect them to be cherishing
towards us — to look at these quietly and
seriously "in the cool of the day," and at the
very time we are confessing our need of pardon
for sins of our own.
Forgiveness of sin is the first blessing we
receive when we come home to God. Renewed
assurance of this forgiveness is what we seek as
often as we bend in secret before our forgiving
Lord. But we cannot have that assurance
unless we are really forgiving our brethren as
God forgives us — in the same generous for-

216 SELFISH FEELINGS ARE EXPELLED
getting way, and to the same extent — "not
unto seven times, but unto seventy times seven."
" If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither
will your Father who is in heaven forgive you";
and we can best learn this forgiving spirit in
secret with the Lord, where, taking a calm
review of the day, we look with uninflamed
hearts at what, when the blood was hot, we
construed as meaning studied slights, or insults,
or wrongs.
For this correction of our own temper and
dispositions towards offending brethren there is
nothing like an hour of calm with God. The
duty of cultivating a right temper we do not
consider so much as we ought. Defects of
temper in us are often seen where there are no
great flaws of any other kind — and they do
more damage to our Christian name than we
think. And yet we often treat them as if they
were of very small account. We say of some
exhibition of hasty anger, or some aggravating
word, " Oh ! it was only my hot temper, I
meant nothing serious by it." Do we suffi
ciently realise that almost every one of the

WHEN WE ARE ALONE WITH GOD 217
actings of Christian love detailed in the
13th chapter of 1st Corinthians has to do with
the feelings and the temper, rather than with the
active life? How do we make distinctions of
blameworthiness where God makes none?
Dishonesty, falsehood, impurity, we do condemn,
and are ashamed of them; but irritability of
temper, proneness to take offence, overweening
self-esteem, ungenerous suspicion of motives,
evil thinking, and evil surmising — why do we
account these not positive sins but only slight
blemishes, or even constitutional tendencies that
we cannot help ?
We do need to have our harsh judgments of
others corrected as well as our flattering judg
ments of ourselves ; and nowhere can this
correcting of them be effected but in the quiet
secret place where we are alone with God, and
ask of Him the all-seeing One, to give us the
seeing eye that will make our judgments of
others more hke what His judgment is, and our
feelings towards our brethren more hke what
His feelings of compassionate and merciful love
are to us all.

WE KNOW THE JOY OF PERFECT SELF-
SURRENDER WHEN WE GET ALONE
WITH GOD

"How blessed, from the bonds of sin
And earthly fetters free,
In singleness of heart and aim
Thy servant, Lord, to be!
The hardest toil to undertake
With joy, at Thy command,
The meanest office to receive
With meekness at Thy hand!
Thus may I serve Thee, gracious Lord,
Thus ever Thine alone;
My soul and body given to Thee,
The purchase Thou hast won!
Through evil or through good report
Still keeping by Thy side;
And by my life, or by my death,
Let Christ be magnified 1
Hymns from the Land of Luther.

XX
WE KNOW THE JOY OF PERFECT SELF-
SURRENDER WHEN WE GET ALONE
WITH GOD
/-\NE of the special joys of the secret hour
^"^ with God is that then, in stillness of
soul, we can renew our full surrender of our
selves and of all that concerns us into the
loving hands of Him who alone can "keep us
from falhng," and "sanctify us wholly," and
"make ah things work together for our good."
Our self -surrender to the Lord is not a thing
to be made once for all at the beginning of
the Christian life. It needs to be renewed per
petually : and if it is a duty to make this daily
self-surrender, it is also a joy. It wonderfuhy
calms the spirit that has been ruffled by the
221

222 THE JOY OF SELF-SURRENDER
worries of the day, by the trials to faith and
patience that have been met with every hour,
and by conscious defeats in the battle with
sin, to bring all these disturbing and chafing
vexations and lay them down at God's feet
and leave them there.
It also wonderfully helps us, when the day
begins, and before facing the world again, to
have a quiet hour in which to brace ourselves
for meeting whatever the day may bring ; and
then to go forth into its duties and its trials,
its temptations and its opportunities, fortified
by a strength and wisdom far exceeding any
of our own, gained by fellowship with Him.
It is comparatively easy to feel the need of
putting our earthly concerns into His wiser
hands: it is comparatively easy, too, to feel
the need of Divine strength for the great
duties that he to our own hands: but some
thing more than that, and more difficult than
that, is needed too ; to put the soul itself into
His hands, that all its emotions, ambitions,
and desires may be thoroughly controlled by
Him at every moment of the day.

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 223
It is easy to say and feel, "My times are in
Thy hand " ; but we need also to put our
spirits into His hand for a completer sanctifica
tion of what is within, and to do this before
the assaults sure to be made upon our spirits
have begun * for the spirit is the most vul
nerable point of us, and, contrary to what is
usually the case in human assaults, none of
the outworks fall until the citadel has fallen
first. To be securely fortified against such a
defeat, "the peace of God which passeth
understanding must keep the heart and the
mind by Christ Jesus," and to gain that for
tifying peace is the blessed work and privilege
of the quiet hour alone with God, where we
learn to put on the armour that will make
us conquerors in the evil day.
For no dependence can be placed on our
own power to guard our spirits from defeat.
" Except the Lord keep the city the watchman
waketh in vain." But what if the watchman
be not awake, but asleep, knowing nothing till
he finds the city taken by the foe ? That is a
double disaster, and our souls, therefore, must

224 THE JOY OF SELF-SURRENDER
be in better keeping than our own from hour
to hour. We need to " commit the keeping of
our souls to Him." The power of a Divine
Hand must be upon us, the shielding of a
Divine Hand must be around us if we are to
be, even for one moment, safe. The very same
grace that was needed to carry the martyrs
triumphant through the flames is needed to
carry any one of us unpolluted through the
world. The one victory is as truly a Divine
victory as the other, and only a Divine Hand
can give it. At the outset of the Christian hfe
we know the saving power of Christ upon us ;
in all the after-course of the Christian hfe
we must know the keeping power of Christ
within us. First we are Divinely conquered;
thenceforward, to the very end, we must be
Divinely controlled. But this can be a real
experience to us only if that Divine control is
prayed for and surrendered to in secret every
day. Do not most of us make a great practical
mistake as to the way in which our hves are
to be brought into subjection to Christ? Paul,

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 225
writing to the Thessalonians, said, "I pray
God your whole spirit and soul and body be
preserved blameless unto the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ." He puts the spirit first,
the body last. We often misquote his words
as if they ran " your body, soul, and spirit '' :
but that is not his order, it is the very re
verse of it. The first thing we are to look
to is the attitude of the spirit, the first thing
we are to seek is the rectification of the
spirit, and then the other constituents of the
whole nature will be sanctified as the result
of that. The spirit controls the soul, and the
soul controls the body; but if we begin by
trying to put the body right before we have
yielded the spirit to sm absolute Divine control,
before we have got that which is the highest
force within us put right and kept right, there
will be nothing but disappointment and miser
able failure in our attempts to subdue the body
to God.
That order of procedure will not do. We
must begin each day by first of all surren
dering the spirit completely to Jesus Christ,
16

226 THE JOY OF SELF-SURRENDER
our Master and our King; and this enthrone
ment of Christ within us will carry with it
necessarily, if it be a real thing, the dethrone
ment of self, the ambitions of self, the plans
of self, the will of self, the lustings of self.
Full surrender to Him implies His full mastery
over us ; and till that is both acknowledged
as a thing that ought to be, and experienced
as a thing that is, there can be nothing in us
of that joy and freedom and power that
come pouring into the reahy consecrated
heart. What joy it gives, and strength too, to
begin each day by feehng, "On this day once
again I am to live simply as a "servant of
Jesus Christ: His will and not my own will
is to sway me every hour!" "A servant of
Jesus Christ ! " then I dare not be the servant
of sin ; I must be holy as my Master is holy.
"A servant of Jesus Christ!" then I will not
be the servant of men : the maxims of the
world will not rule me; I will not take my
cue from the world; I am under orders only
to my Master in heaven. " A servant of Jesus

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 227
Christ ! " then I must be the servant of men,
to help them, to comfort them, and to stoop
to the lowest offices in their behalf as my
Master did. " A servant of Jesus Christ ! "
then, if His servant anywhere, I must be His
servant everywhere; in all society with men
I must never forget my servanthood to Him :
I must show myself His servant openly as well
as confess it secretly. " A servant of Jesus
Christ ! " then, if I want to know Him, I have
simply to imitate Him, to walk as He walked,
to plant my feet in His footprints. As the
eyes of servants look unto the hand of their
masters, to see how their work should be done,
and copy what they see, so my eyes "must
wait upon the Lord." If His service is some
times difficult I must not complain : He may
use me as He wills. And at the end of ah I
will be more than satisfied if I only hear Him
say, "Well done, good and faithful servant,
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
To be a true and faithful servant such as
this I must put myself daily, by fresh sur
render, into Almighty hands, and so I use the

228 THE JOY OF SELF-SURRENDER
words of ancient trust, "Into Thy hands I
commit my spirit " for this day and every day
till I need them no more. These words Jesus
Himself used when, on the Cross, He was
looking out on death; but they had been,
before that, the words of one who was
looking out, not on death, but on the dif
ficulties and trials of hfe. If they were
enough for my Master to die upon they are
more than enough for me to hve upon, and
so I say —
Into Thy protecting hands I commit my
spirit, for the keeping of it. Life is full of
temptations, the world f uh of snares ; I cannot
keep myself, but Thou canst keep me from
falling; I trust myself to Thee.
Into Thy tender hands I commit my spirit
for the comforting of it. The sorrows of my
life may be many, the waters deep, the
furnace hot; I may have thick darkness over
me soon in which I will lose all my joy, but
if Thou wilt whisper to me then, "I am with
thee still," I will fear no evil.
Into Thy correcfe"n£_hands I commit my

WHEN ALONE WITH GOD 229
spirit for the sanctifying of it. I am willing
to be chastened if only the chastening makes
me purer than before. Take what way Thou
wilt with me, I will bless the hand that
smites. Into Thy moulding hands I commit my
spirit for the consecrating of it. Use me for
Thy glory. I would not hve to myself. Let
self be killed that Christ may be all in me.
Turn me as the clay is turned in the potter's
hands. I would fain be a vessel for the
Master's use, filled with the Master's grace,
and Thou canst make me so.
Then if death should come even suddenly
and call for me, I will hear Thee calling, and
reply, " Into Thy redeeming hands I commit
my spirit for the glorifying of it. Thy
creating hands fashioned me, Thy preserving
hands have kept me, Thy guiding hands have
led me, Thy appealing hands have beckoned
to me, Thy smiting hands have chastened
me, but they were always saving hands that
delivered me, and sheltering hands that
covered me. I ever found them to be loving

230 THE JOY OF SELF-SURRENDER
hands, I have proved them to be strong, and
so I trust myself entirely and for ever to
Thee; 'Into Thy hands I commit my spirit,
for Thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of
truth.' "

UNWIN BROTHEBB, LIMITED, THE GBESHAM PKES3, WOKING AND LONDON.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
THE MASTER'S QUESTIONS TO
HIS DISCIPLES
THOUGHTS DEVOTIONAL AND PRACTICAL FOR THE
SILENT HOUR
Second Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, Ss.
"This is one of the best books we have seen for a long time. It
consists of what are sometimes called ' Instructions ' on our Lord's
Questions. They are meant for use in private hours of devotion, and
will prove a real aid to meditation and to practical conduct springing
out of it. We gladly recommend it to all in search of a good book." —
Record. "We have seldom read anything more deeply spiritual." — Life of
Faith. " In the line of purely devotional literature nothing to compare with
Mr. Knight's volume has appeared for a long time. It fulfils the ideal
of a devotional book. . . . The prevailing note is sympathetic insight
into the Master's mind . . . choicely conceived, choicely written, and,
we may add, choicely bound, this is an ideal gift-book." — Northern
Whig. " For silent hours spent apart with God, this volume will be a
delightful companion. Those who wish a book for friends passing
through dark hours will find it hard to make a better choice." —
Christian. " Studies these that have been distilled from a mind long familiar
with the heart and message of the Master, and not less so with the
burdens, the needs, and the sorrows of men." — Truth.
" The meditations are, indeed, fifty-two pearls. The jaded mind
and fretful heart will find grand refreshment in the precious teaching of
the Master which Mr. Knight sets forth with such lustre and beauty.
The book is very helpful, and full of music and poetry." — Methodist
Recorder. "We have been delighted with these 'devotional and practical'
studies of our Lord's questions to His disciples. To begin with, the
idea is a good one. It is of the highest importance in the culture of the
Christian life that we should know clearly and well our Lord's will and
purpose concerning us. There is a great need to-day for an intelligent
understanding oi the laws of Christ in relation to everyday life. We
need to go back to the sayings and commands of Christ, and receive our
authority and inspiration directly from Him. Mr. Knight has taken our
Lord's questions to His disciples and dealt with them as bearing specially
upon discipleship to-day. The result is a deeply interesting and inspiring
book. Too many books of a devotional character are of an emotional
and, consequently, of a superficial nature. Mr. Knight takes us to the
foundation principles of our Christian life and character, and builds up
from these. We welcome this stimulating and suggestive book, and
heartily commend it as a real aid to the culture of Christian life and
character." — Methodist Times.
London : HODDER & STOUGHTON.

ME*UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

3 9002 08844 9658