You women here, if you knew that you were not the first and only one in the affections of your husband, what would you say? And you husbands, would you dwell with a wife if you knew you were not the only one in her affections, but that they were divided between you and someone else? "Not likely!" you would say; "I am not going to lavish my affections, and my society, and my gifts, and everything I possess, on one whose heart is divided with another. If she will have her heart divided, then she must go to that other."
Now you know G.o.d is a jealous G.o.d, and He knows who do mock Him, and He knows who will not sacrifice this conformity to the world that they may walk with Him in white. He knows, also, who do not care what anybody thinks of them, or what people say of them; who are willing to be counted fools and fanatics that they may walk with Him and promote the interests of His kingdom, and who only regard their bodies as His instruments and their homes as His temples; who are willing that their breakfast hours, or dinner hours, or luncheon hours, or any other hours may be upset, and, in fact, everything made subservient to the interests of His kingdom. We must place everything at His service--our children, business, homes, and everything. If I understand it, this is nonconformity to the world.
Before I close, let me say a word to help those who are desiring to attain this blessing. There is no other way. It is of no use beating about. BE NOT CONFORMED, BUT BE YE TRANSFORMED. These two are in juxtaposition. If you will be conformed, then you cannot be transformed; if you will not be transformed, then you must be conformed. Now, will you give up conformity to the world? If so, you may, everyone of you, be transformed this morning--go up into the land. You may all be saved to-day, and make your abiding-place in Christ, and have all the power and glory which comes to those who possess Him; you may advance from the miserable condition of a poor up-and-down, in-and-out, wretched man, on to the glorious vantage ground of a saved man--a saved woman--a triumphant saint of G.o.d!
FAITH.
My faith _looks up_ to Thee-- My faith, so small, so slow; It lifts its drooping eyes to see And claim the blessing now.
Thy wondrous gift It sees afar; Thy perfect love It claims to share, And doth not, cannot fear.
My faith _takes hold_ on Thee-- My faith, so weak, so faint; It lifts its trembling hands to be, Trembling, but violent.
The kingdom now It takes by force, And waits till Thou, Its last resource, Shall seal and sanctify.
My faith _holds fast_ on Thee, My faith, still small, but sure, Its anchor holds _alone_ to Thee, Whose presence keeps me pure.
And Thou alway, To see and hear, By night, by day, Art very near-- Art very near to me.
THIRD ADDRESS.
What a deal there is of going to meetings and getting blessed, and then going away and living just the same, until sometimes we, who are constantly engaged in trying to bring people nearer to G.o.d, go away so discouraged that our hearts are almost broken.
We feel that people go back again from the place where we have led them, instead of stepping up to the place to which G.o.d is calling them. They come and come, and we are, as the Prophet says, unto them a very pleasant instrument, or a very unpleasant one, as the case may be; and so they go away, and do not _get anything_. They do not make any _definite advance_. We have not communicated unto them any spiritual gift. They merely have their feelings stirred, and, consequently, they live the next week exactly as they lived the last, and go down under the temptation just as they did before.
Would you dream for a moment from reading the New Testament that this was the kind of thing G.o.d intended in His provisions of grace and salvation? Is there not a definite end in every promise, exhortation, and command? G.o.d is most _definite_ in His requirements and promises, and in the provision which He has made; and yet many of the Lord"s people are perpetually and persistently _indefinite_. They go to and fro, like a door on its hinges, and never get anything from the Lord. We want you absolutely to get something from the Lord, and we are quite sure you may and _will_, if you comply with the condition. The Lord is ready to give you that particular measure of grace, strength, and salvation which you need. Now that you have come up to the threshhold of the goodly land, there is only one thing which can keep you out, provided you have made the needed consecration. Of course, if you are holding anything back, then you can never come in until you give that up. If yon are cleaving to some doubtful thing, and don"t give G.o.d the benefit of the doubt, you can never come in; but, if you see this, and make the necessary consecration, if you _really_ desire this blessing, there is only one thing which can possibly keep you out of its enjoyment, and that is--_unbelief_.
It will be said of you, in years to come, as it was said of some in olden times, "They entered not in because of unbelief." You have come right up to the threshhold, and some of you have been there many a time. Oh! what gracious influences you have been the subject of. You have seen through the veil! You have felt His hand! You have had your feet on the threshhold! You have been almost in, and then you have drawn back through unbelief. Shall it be so again to-night? G.o.d forbid! Will yon step over? Will you venture? Will you trust? Will yon leap on to His faithfulness? Will you spring into the arms of Omnipotent Love, and trust Him with consequences? Never mind if you _do_ die, or something happens to you that never happened to anyone else in the world"s history; G.o.d will take care of you. Never mind if the devil does come round and "consider" you, as he did Job, and afflict you with boils, and put you upon the dunghill--you will be happier there with Jesus than in a palace without Him. Oh! this caring for consequences! The devil knows the grand _possibilities_ open to many of you; he knows not only what you might receive and enjoy in yourselves, but what you might accomplish for G.o.d if you would only come in and possess this blessing; and so he frightens you with consequences. He knows what you might do, and whom you might be instrumental in saving!
Who knows how many of these precious ones that cl.u.s.ter round you, you may be instrumental in leading on to this higher platform--this glorious vantage ground of Christian experience? and, through them, how many more? and how, in this way, the glorious blessing would spread? Remember, also, that every time you come near and go back, there is less _probability that you will ever come in at all_; and the nearer you come and go back, the less probability there is that you will ever come as near again.
You _are grieving the Spirit_. There are some people who have been coming near for years, and now they have gone back altogether, and I am afraid they will never come up again. _What will you do?_ The law of the kingdom, from beginning to end, is, "According to your faith be it unto you," and, "What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive _them_, and ye shall have _them_." _Eternal truth has uttered it_--"ye shall have them." Now then, will you? Have you let go all? Are your skirts free? Are you leaving all behind you? Are you resolved from to-night to cut from the past, and no more make any provision for the flesh to fulfil its l.u.s.ts, but that you will bid the things that are behind a final adieu, close your eyes on them, and fix your eyes on the mark of the prize of your high calling, and press on every succeeding hour of your life until you reach it? Will you? If you will, G.o.d will give you this blessing. He waits to do it; He is here. The Holy Ghost is here: He is leading many of you up; He is beseeching you; He is seconding what I am saying, in your hearts; He is saying, "Come, beloved; come into the banqueting house;" He wants to bless you and fill you with His Spirit. Now then, will you come? Oh! the Lord help you not to draw back, but to press on, _press on, press on_, never minding the consequences.
FOURTH ADDRESS.
I think, dear friends, that I have only a very few words to say to you now. I am, as it were, holding on to G.o.d for power by which to say them, so that they shall sink into your hearts and produce some immediate and permanent results in your lives. I believe the Lord is not only grieved and disappointed, but I believe He is angry, when His people meet, and talk, and sing, and pray, and then go away without any definite result having been reached--without ever having given anything to Him, or received anything from Him. I believe He feels with respect to us, just as He felt with respect to His people of old, when He said, "Why come ye and cover my altar with tears?" As though He said, "You know what I want you to do; come and do it; and, when you do it, I will open the windows of Heaven and pour out a blessing."
My heart ached at what a lady told me this morning, before I came into this hall. She said, "A friend of mine remarked, "You don"t mean to say that you are going to call four thousand people together to cry for the Holy Ghost?" She said, "Yes, I do." "Well, it makes me frightened. What if anything should happen; if something should be done?"" Would to G.o.d something would happen; would to G.o.d something might be done that should frighten somebody. But oh! what did that reveal? Depths of infidelity and unbelief; and yet people wonder that infidelity is increasing. Is it any wonder that infidels are laughing us to scorn? Is it any wonder that at Christian Evidence Societies men get up and say that the Christian system has become effete? No wonder, when that is the state of heart of the Lord"s people.
People meet together, and pray, and talk, and sing "Whiter than snow," and they don"t believe it any more than do the heathen. They pray for the Holy Ghost, and do not so much as believe there is a Holy Ghost. They ask G.o.d to do something, when they never knew Him to do anything, and don"t expect He ever will. The world is dying because of this unreality, and being d.a.m.ned by it.
Josephine Butler says, about France, "France is waiting for a _reality_:" and so is England, and so is the world waiting for a _reality_. G.o.d help us to make some _real people_. You believe, some of you, that nothing is going to happen. You don"t believe that G.o.d is going to do anything--so He won"t in your experience. If you had lived at Nazareth, do you think Jesus Christ would have done anything for you?
If you had been deaf and dumb, you would have remained so, for He could not have done any mighty works in you, because of your unbelief! He is the same now; and if you don"t expect Him to do anything, brother, He will not. But some of us do _expect_ Him to do _something_. Some of us _believe_ He is going to do _something_, and that by this little stone, cut out of a mountain, without hands, He intends to raise a great kingdom. Jesus Christ is not going to be disappointed, and allow the devil to chuckle in His face forever, and say, "I have cheated You out of Your inheritance." We will do something, or die in attempting it.
After all, what does G.o.d want with us? He wants us just _to be_ and _to do_. He wants us to be like His Son, and then to do as His Son did; and when we come to that, He will shake the world through us. People say, "You can"t be like His Son." Very well, then, you will never get any more than you believe for. If I did not think Jesus Christ strong enough to destroy the works of the devil, and to bring us back to G.o.d"s original pattern, I would throw the whole thing up for ever. What! He has given, us a religion we cannot practice? I say, No, He has not come to mock us. What? He has given us a Saviour who cannot save? Then I decline to have anything to do with Him. What! does He profess to do for me what He cannot? No, no. He "is not a man, that He should lie: neither the Son of man, that He should repent:" and I tell you that His scheme of salvation is two-sided--it is G.o.d-ward and man-ward. It contemplates me as well as it contemplates the great G.o.d. It is not a scheme of salvation, merely--it is a scheme of _restoration_. If He cannot restore me, He must d.a.m.n me. If He cannot heal me, and make me over again, and restore me to the pattern He intended me to be, He has left Himself no choice.
I challenge anybody to disprove by the Bible that He proposes to _restore_ me--brain, heart, soul, spirit, body, every fibre of my nature--to restore me perfectly, to conform me wholly to the image of His Son. If He could have saved me without restoring me, then He could have saved me without a Saviour at all. How do you read your Bibles? How do you read the history of the miracles--the stories of His opening the eyes, unstopping the ears, cleansing the leper, and raising the dead? He will heal you if you will let Him. These are the sort of words the world wants--the living words, living embodiments of Christianity, walking embodiments of the Spirit, and life and power of Jesus Christ. You may scatter Bibles, as you have done, all over the world. You may preach, and sing, and talk, and do what you will; but, if you don"t exhibit to the people _living epistles_, show them the transformation of character and life in yourself which is brought about by the power and grace of G.o.d--if you don"t go to them and do the works of Jesus Christ, you may go on preaching, and the world will get worse and worse, and the church, too. We want a living embodiment of Christianity. We want JESUS TO COME IN THE FLESH AGAIN.
Did you ever notice the tense in that pa.s.sage--"He that believeth that Jesus is come in the flesh"--not that He _did_ come, or _was_ come, but that He _is_ come now. Oh! how people hate Jesus Christ in the flesh.
You may be ever so devout, ever so Pharisaic, till you come to Jesus in the flesh, and then they will gnash on you with their teeth as they gnashed on Christ. They can"t resist such people. This is what the world wants--holy people; and nothing else will do. We have tried everything else. You Christian people from other divisions of the Lord"s forces, you have tried Bibles, and preaching, and singing, and services, and Sunday-schools. I have been lately to a part of the country where they told me that nearly every member of the population had pa.s.sed through their Sunday-schools, and yet there are men there who will drag a young girl down a flight of stone stairs and kick her till she is black and blue. The great ma.s.s of the people who took part in the Lancashire Riots have pa.s.sed through your Sunday-schools.
Now, I say, G.o.d is speaking to you in these things, if only you will hear Him, and He is saying that the letter killeth, that circ.u.mcision, and baptism, and forms, and ceremonies, and going to chapel, and Bible reading, is all nothing, when there is no Holy Ghost in it. You want a real, living embodiment of Christianity over again, and if the Salvation Army is not going to be that, may G.o.d put it out! I would be willing to p.r.o.nounce the funeral oration of the Army if I did not believe it was going to be that. The world is dying for this.
I was so touched, yesterday, by hearing a story from Paris, told by a young woman who has just returned, and was telling me about my precious child. The story was this: A woman came, one morning, and asked for the lady. They tried to put her off, and asked, "Will not someone else do?" "No," said the woman; "I do want to see the lady herself." They said, "You can"t see her to-day--she is too ill!"
"Then," she said, "When can I see her?" They appointed a time the next afternoon, and then this poor woman came, and she told this story: "I did hear, six years ago, that there was somebody could take the devil out. Now, see, I have got a devil in, and he do make me wicked and miserable, and I do want him taken out, and I have been running about these six years to find somebody who could pull him out. I"ve been to lots of priests, but they could not pull him out because they had a devil in _them_; and, you see when there"s a devil in me and a devil in them, we got to fighting, and they could not pull him out." What a comment on "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" Of course, n.o.body can put a devil out who has a devil in them. The poor old woman"s sense told her this.
"And," she continued, "a gentleman told me that this lady who has come here is able to pull him out, and I have come to her to do it, for I want him pulled out." Oh, yes! I thought, that is what poor humanity wants all the world over. THEY WANT PEOPLE WHO CAN CAST THE DEVIL OUT--people who have in them Holy Ghost power to do it. Oh!
will you be such an one?
"Where is G.o.d?" someone said to me the other day, in agony--"Where is G.o.d?" Where, indeed! "Why does He not show Himself? Why does He not do something?" That lady was afraid something would happen when 4,000 met together to beseech the Holy Ghost! Why not? You say He has not changed. Your creed says so. You say He is the same yesterday, to-day and forever. You say the needs of the world are as great. You say His great, benevolent heart beats for His fallen, sinful, erring human family. You say He loves us. You are always telling about His love. What is the reason He does not do something for us, and come down in the same plent.i.tude of spiritual power as He did at Pentecost? Why? Only because you are not as given up to Him and as willing to do it as the people were in former times. You have not accounted all things dung and dross. You have not thrown everything into the scale, and, therefore, He will not thus baptize you with the Holy Ghost. These are the people that the world wants--people of one idea--Christ, and Him crucified. For Christ"s sake, give up quibbling.
I said to a lady who had got this blessing when somebody got at her and began with this verse and that verse, and this translation and that translation--"Mind you don"t begin to reason; you will lose your blessing"--and she did lose it. You can"t know it by understanding.
Oh! if the world could have known it by understanding, what a deal they would have known. But He despises all your philosophy. It is not by understanding, but _by faith_! If ever you know G.o.d it will be by faith, becoming as a little child--opening your mouth, and saying, "Lord, pour in;" and then your quibbles and difficulties will be gone, and you will see holiness, sanctification, purity, perfect love, burning out on every page of G.o.d"s Word. I weep before G.o.d, I feel almost more than I can bear, over this awful knack that some people seem to have of plucking the bread out of the children"s mouths when they are just getting an appet.i.te for it. The Lord have mercy upon them! If you don"t come in yourselves, for Christ"s sake don"t keep other people out.
A minister--a devoted, good man--was trying to show me that this sanctification was too big to be got and kept. I said, "My dear sir, how do you know? If another man has faith to march up to Jesus Christ and say, "Here, I see this in your Book; You have promised this to me; now then, Lord, I have faith to take it:" mind you don"t measure His privilege by your faith. Do you think the church has come up to His standard of privilege and obligation? I don"t. It has many marches to make yet. Mind you don"t hinder anybody." The law of the kingdom all the way through will be--"According to your faith." If you want this blessing, put down your quibbles, put your feet on your arguments, march up to the throne and ask for it, and kill, and crucify, and cast from you, the accursed thing which hinders it, and then you shall have it, and the Lord will fill you with His power and glory now, and something _will_ happen. The Lord grant it.