Sort Of Religion That Does To Die With!!!

SORT OF RELIGION THAT DOES TO DIE WITH!!!

People all over the land are astounded at our poor, weak, illiterate, Salvation Army Soldiers. A gentleman, in a meeting on Easter Monday, a leading man of thought and experience in the holiness world, who was there all day--when my daughter said, `Why don't you speak?' said, Òne feels as if one can't speak in these meetings.' `Why?' These people have such unction from the Holy One that they are wiser than their teachers. Another gentleman, of considerable position, too, in the religious world, said, Ì feel like getting down at their feet. I feel as if they could teach me.' How is it that they have such power--these babes in intellect and intelligence? All over the land people say this to me. People who talk and go ahead in other meetings, when they get into our meetings, say, Ì can't. They are so far ahead of me that, to tell you the truth, I have nothing to say.' I say, the Lord have mercy upon you, and make haste and come up after them. Only get down from your high mightiness as low as these people, and you will get it. It is not because they are poor and illiterate, that they have power, but because they are babes in spirit. Even as Christ said, "I thank thee, oh! Father, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." The simple spirit, the teachable believing soul--oh! how much more it learns of God, in one hour's precious communion, than Doctors of Divinity learn in weeks of close study, who have not got it, because it is the SPIRIT that teaches the things of God. This is union with Jesus that bringeth forth fruit unto God, and, oh! the wonderful things it enables us to bring forth. If you would all follow me, as far as I have gone this afternoon, and make the resolution I made at 15 years of age, not to be put off with theories, but that you will KNOW THE LORD, that you will have this Divine union, and that you will never rest till you get it and know you have it--if we could all get thus far by next Sunday--what happiness there would be amongst you. There would be some Hallelujahs. Many of you would be surprised, how you would find your tongues. A gentleman once said to me Ì never did shout in my life, but upon my word I couldn't help it.' I said, Àmen. It's time, then, you began.' I hope it may be the same with many of you. When the Lord comes to His Temple and fills it with His glory, you won't know what to do. You must find vent somewhere, or you will be as the poor old negro said he was, "Ready to bust his waistcoat." We feel so about temporal things. People drop down dead with joy. People shriek with grief. People's hearts stand still with wonder at the news they have heard, perhaps from some prodigal boy. I heard of a mother, not long ago, whom some one injudiciously told of the sudden return of her son, who dropped down dead, and never spoke. And when the Master comes to His Temple, that glorious blessed Holy Saviour, whom you profess so to long after and to love, and who has been absent so many years, and whom you have been seeking after with strong crying and tears, when He comes, do you think it will be too much to shout your song, or go on your face, or do any extravagant thing? Oh! no, if there is reality, you cannot help yourself. The manifestation will be according to your nature. One will fall down and weep in quietness, and the other will get up and shout and jump. You cannot help it. I have read of two martyrs one of whom rejoiced in the realization of God's presence, and the other was in darkness, yet did not deny his Lord. He continued in the way of obedience, and the other was encouraging him to hope and believe that the Master would come; but He had not come, when they started from the dungeon to the stake; so they fixed upon a sign, and the one said to the other, "If He comes, you will give me the sign on the road." The Master did come, but the martyr could not confine himself to the sign. He shouted, raising his arms to his fellow-martyr, "He's come, He's come, He's come." He couldn't help it.

When He comes you won't be ashamed who knows it. When you really get a living Christ for your husband, you will be prouder than the bride, you will have got a husband worth being proud of, and you will love to acknowledge and praise Him, and the day is coming when you will crown Him before all the host of heaven. The Lord help you to accept Him, and put away everything that hinders His coming. Amen.

6. The Fruits of Union with Christ

ROMANS, viii. 4.--"That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

WE dealt, on Sunday week, with "What the Law could not do;" and last Sabbath afternoon we dealt with "What Jesus Christ could do," by uniting us with Himself and giving us power. I want, this afternoon, to direct your attention to the fruits of this union--THE LAW FULFILLED IN US. What does it mean?

First.--I want just to say two or three words about Law in the abstract. There seems to me to be an awful misconception of the Apostle's writings respecting the Law, caused by "wresting" and misapplying what he says on justification by faith. People should bear in mind that much of this Epistle, and some others, was written on purpose to meet the extreme legal notions of the Jews, who had no other idea of righteousness than that of their own efforts to keep the Law (Romans x. 3), and that, therefore, the Apostle was bound, as any other writer would be in such circumstances, to put the extreme view on the other side. Many, not considering this, separate these passages from their explanatory connections, and from all the rest of the Word of God, and preach, nowadays, that we have nothing to do with the Law. Hence, there has come to be a spirit of Antinomianism abroad in the land, compared with which the Antinomianism of bygone ages was harmless. God helping me, I shall never cease to lift up my voice against it.

Now please, first note that there is, in this writing, talking, and singing about the Law a great deal of mental fog and confusion. People should be very careful, when they come to such matters as these, to be clear in their own minds, as to what the Apostle is writing about; but I find frequently in such writings and songs a total misapprehension as to the meaning of the Apostle, and a total confounding of the Moral with the Ceremonial Law. Now, always mind, when you read anything about the Law, to examine and find out which Law is meant, whether it is the great Moral Law, which never has been, and never can be, abrogated, or the Ceremonial Law, which, in Christ, confessedly was done away. Mind which, because your salvation may depend upon that point. If you make a mistake there, you may be lost through it; therefore, be very careful. Now, I say that people confound these, and, consequently, there is a perfect hotch-potch of theology in this day, which I defy anybody to understand. People do not know what they are to believe, or what they are not to believe. As a gentleman said, not long ago, ìt is confusion confounded. I go to one meeting and hear this, and then I go to another meeting and hear that, and, very often, in the very same meeting, the speakers will get up and flatly contradict each other!' Èxactly,' I said, `but you have got the Bible. Why don't you study that for yourself? Why not use your own common sense--why not let your conscience speak?' `But,' said he, `why do not our ministers do it?' `Because.' said I, `many of them do not know it themselves. Let your conscience speak, and God will not let you go wrong.' It is an honest heart people want, and then they will get the light. People sing about the Law, talk about the Law, and glory in being free from the Law, in a lawless, Antinomian spirit, as far from anything Paul ever wrote or meant, as hell is from heaven! Oh, it is an awfully bad sign, when people are out of love with the Law of God! David made his boast in the Law of his God, he meditated on it by day and by night, and its precepts were his delight; he loved it with all his soul, and so did David's Son, and He is too much in love with His Father's Law and Him, to hold fellowship with anybody who does not love it. As He said to the Jews, "He that is of God, heareth God's words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God;' and, again, of His disciples, "For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me." So, mind, if you do not love the words, the expression of the will of God, you do not love God, and if you do not love the Father, neither do you love the Son. This is the very accusation which He brought against the Jews, that they had made void His Father's Law. Let us mind, then, the distinction always made between the great Moral and the Ceremonial Law.

In the second place: I want you to note, that when you have ascertained that the Apostle is speaking of the Moral Law--and he appears to speak disparagingly of it--he is always referring to its inability to justify a sinner, or to produce spiritual life. This, he says, it could not do; but he never speaks disparagingly of it as the guide and standard of spiritual life, after life is given. No! he goes back to it as the only standard, and so did Jesus Christ. They continually refer to the Law as the highest expression of the holiness and righteousness of God, and as the standard by which we are to set our souls and consciences. What other standard have we but the Law? How am I to judge of my thoughts, words, and actions but by the Law? Where has Jesus Christ given me any other gauge? And if people would but read on, and let the Apostle explain himself, they would understand him better, and not get into such tanglements and mazes! Paul is most careful to guard himself against the Antinomian conclusions which he saw might be drawn from isolated parts of his writings. He says, "Do we, then, make void the Law through faith? nay, we establish the Law." And, again, "Wherefore the Law is holy, and the commandment holy, just, and good;" and, again, when he says, that "To them that are without Law He became as without Law," he guards himself by a parenthesis, "Being not without Law to God, but under the Law to Christ." That is under the great universal Law of love, which fulfills all other law; for

"Love is the fulfilling of the Law." Love is the very spirit and essence of the Law. The Law is to me the highest expression of what I OUGHT to be, in my relations to my Creator and in my relations to my fellow-creatures. Now, can what ought to be ever be abrogated? Does it stand to sense? Can the rightness of things ever be altered? Can God ever make two and two five, and can God make evil good and good evil? He can make an evil person good, by saving him from the evil and making him good; but God cannot make evil itself good, and good evil, and He never professes to do it.

Oh, this confounding of things! how it does ruin and befog poor souls; How can it ever be less the duty of the creature to love and serve the Creator, than it was when he first came pure and spotless from His hand? How can it ever be less my duty to love my neighbour as myself, than it was at the beginning, or how can I satisfy my conscience with less than loving all men with a pure, benevolent love such as God bears to them, in my measure and according to my capacity? The same standard remains, and the difference between God's scheme of salvation and the scheme of salvation so widely preached now, is that man's scheme proposes to get me into heaven without fulfilling this Law, while God's scheme proposes to give me power to FULFIL IT. Alas! I am afraid many will not find out which is the right one, man's or God's till they get to the Judgment Seat and find it out too late!

Now, I say, that there is not a word, rightly understood and interpreted by correlative Scriptures, in the whole New Testament that disparages or ignores or sets aside the Law of God--not a word! Do you think the Apostle was as unphilosophical as many now-a-days? Did he not know what he wrote? Is he not as clear as a bell? And now he comes to the climax of his argument, the great end and purpose towards which he has been advancing in his preceding reasonings: "THAT the righteousness of the Law might be FULFILLED in us." As though he had said, "This great and glorious end which was lost in Adam shall be re-found and restored." So the old serpent shall be circumvented at last, and God's people shall be able to fulfil this beautiful ideal of rectitude and righteousness which God has planned for man--Jesus Christ shall destroy the work of the devil, restore man, and enable him to walk in the light, even as He is in the light. What the Law tried to do by a restraining power from without, the Gospel does by an inspiring power from within. That is the difference. I could not keep it in the letter, but, united to my heavenly Bridegroom, I can keep it in the Spirit. He fills me with His love, and this enables me to keep the Law, for love is the fulfilling of the Law. "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour" of any kind, and, again, the great Teacher said, "For all the Law is fulfilled in one word--Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." If you do that, will you injure your neighbour? See how the Spirit fulfills the Law! If you love your neighbour, will you misrepresent him, cheat him, envy him anything that he possesses or enjoys? `No,' you say, òf course not; it is a contradiction.' Very well, then, get this love in your soul and you will fulfil the Law. Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and he that loveth in this sense dwelleth in God and God in him. Love is the fulfilling of the Law, and the great glory of the Gospel of Christ is that it brings us back to love His Law, and, as the angels delight in it, and, as all holy intelligences delight in it, so we delight in it, and the righteousness of the Law--high, deep, and broad, and long as it is--shall be fulfilled in us, "who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

Then, I say, the Apostle evidently considered this fulfillment of the Law of Righteousness in us as the highest end of our existence and of redemption; for, he says, God sent His Son that the righteousness of the Law may be fulfilled in us, Mark, not that its claims shall be abated: Oh! not one jot or tittle shall ever be abated. They cannot. God could not abate them. Not that the righteousness of the Law shall cease to have a claim upon you. Oh! if He could have saved us like that, Christ need not have come at all. He could have saved us without a Mediator. No, no! but that the righteousness of the Law may be FULFILLED in us as it was in Him. That we should be brought to the full stature of men and women in Christ Jesus, that we should have this spirit of our heavenly Bridegroom, by which we fulfil the Law, and the servant, in his measure, shall be as his Lord.

How? As I explained, last Sunday, first: We shall be delivered from the reigning, condemning power of the Law by virtue of an infinite, vicarious sacrifice punished in our stead, and then, married to Him, we shall serve in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

I want to be eminently and intensely practical, for the sake of the hungering and thirsting souls who are asking me in their letters, `Tell me how? Help me?'

Just let us look at this result (in fourth verse). People talk about glorifying Christ; but, it seems to me, this does glorify Him. It seems to me here is something to glory in, that He has circumvented the old serpent and snatched the prey from his teeth, and restored it, and enabled man, after all, to fulfil the righteousness of God. Not only in what Christ does for us; but what He does IN US, that God should look on you and say, Ì am well pleased. There is nothing there contrary to my will.' He will give you the testimony, as He did Enoch, that your ways please Him, that your thoughts please Him, that your motives, and purposes and desires, and actions please Him. That is what the Gospel proposes to do. We have seen how this spirit is produced. Now let us look at the fruits, and first: This fruit is brought forth in THE AFFECTIONS!

Those people who are thus united to Christ fulfil the Law in their affections. You know it is commonly said that if you get hold of the affections of a man or a woman you get hold of him or her. So you do. This is the touchstone, and there is nothing in which I have been so grieved and disappointed as in the manifest want of quickness, livingness in the affections of God's people for Him. Oh! how I have seen this come out. The coldness, the unsympathetic character of a great many people's religion, and yet people whom one would not like to unchristianise. I cannot explain it by any better term than want of quickness. I have often been struck with the difference when you touch individuals on some point that affects them personally, and on those which relate to the Kingdom of God, and have been tempted to say with the Apostle,

"All men seek their own, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's." Alas! I fear it is very largely so. You talk with a lady about the salvation of her children's souls, the souls of her neighbours, and her servants, or about the cause of God in general, and she will talk "good" with you, so to speak, and you will feel, `yes, it is all very well,' but it doesn't seem to come up from the depths. It seems to come from the throat, so to speak; a sort of superficial, surface kind of thing. But, if a child is dangerously ill, how quick the mother's sympathies, how ready to listen, how willing to do anything that you suggest to help the child. If the business is in danger, if a man has got into difficulties and you can suggest any plan by which he may get out of them, how quickly his attention is aroused. His interest doesn't flag, because the subject touches him to the quick. It is his concern, and just so in many other things. God forbid I should judge all Christians. No, no, no!--there are blessed exceptions. There are many like David--rivers of water do run down their eyes; but I am speaking of the mass of professors. I am afraid, that in their affections there is a great deal of this lukewarm superficiality. Why is it? Because such people do not abide in Christ, if ever they were in Him. They do not keep the freshness and the quickness of the Spirit of Jesus. They do not give themselves time to do it for one thing, or care about it for another. We want the constant indwelling of the Holy Spirit to quicken our spiritual perceptions and keep us awake. It is Satan's great desire to rock us to sleep, and there is no quality in which the disciples have been more conspicuous than in going to sleep since the time when the professed watchers went to sleep in the garden; but Jesus, in his mercy and love, is always wakening them. But, oh! this disposition to go to sleep, to lose our quickness of perception. Now, friends, what must you do?

You must do as you did at first. Cry and believe till your soul is filled with the love of God.

I shall never forget reading, when only fourteen years of age, a sentiment of a precious and valiant soldier of the Lord Jesus, who is now in glory. Speaking of putting a test, he said that people might easily find out whether they loved God or themselves best: `Suppose you were in business in a little village, and were doing pretty well, and everything was going smoothly with you; but there was nothing for you to do there for the Kingdom of God, no particular way in which you could serve or glorify God; and, suppose there was another little village hard by, where there was nothing whatever doing for the Kingdom, and you felt it laid upon your soul to go there in order that you might preach to unconverted people and raise a church, and do something for souls. Ah! but you have got a nice business and you don't know whether you would prosper or not in the other village. Now you may know whether you are serving God or yourself first, by this test. If you are seeking God, you will be ready to go to that strange village and trust Him with the consequences; but, if you are serving yourself, you will stop where you are. The Lord has helped me to apply that many a time to many things besides business, and to keep the Kingdom of God as I made up my mind it should be first always--not in time merely, but in degree--all the way through. If I love Him best, I shall feel for Him deepest, and shall act for Him first. If I love Him best, I shall feel for Him more deeply than for my husband or children, near and precious as they are and dearer than my own life a thousand times; but He will be dearer still and His interests; and if, as Jesus Christ says, His interests require me to sacrifice these precious and beloved ones of my soul, then I shall sacrifice them; for the philosophical reason that I love Him better than I love them, and, therefore, I shall lay them on His altar, to promote His glory. If I understand it, this is the fruit of the Spirit in the affections--God first. I am afraid, in a great many instances, it is husband first, wife first, children first, and, I am afraid, in some cases, business first, and then God may take what there is left and be thankful for that! Now, if you are in this condition you need not expect joy, peace, power. You will never get it if you do. God will have to make you over again before you can get it, and to alter the conditions of His salvation. Oh!

but if you will lay it all on His altar, that is quite another thing.'

As I said to a lady, a little time ago, `The Lord can take your husband, if you refuse to give him to Him;' and I am afraid God's people often compel Him to take their darlings, because they make them idols; whereas, if they had laid them on His altar, they might have had them back, as Abraham received back Isaac. I said to a gentleman, `Mind that God does not burn down your barns, wreck your ships, and take away your riches. God loves your soul enough to do it, if you let these things prevent that whole-hearted consecration which He requires.' We are in His hands. "Whom He loveth He chasteneth," and if you want to keep the precious things you have, oh! put them at His feet, and hold them in subordination to Him. First, in your affections! He is a jealous God, and jealousy in God is very much like jealousy in us. It is the same characteristic of mind, only purified from selfishness. He is a jealous God, and if you will love these things better than Him, and if you will not give Him your affections, then He will chastise you, or--what is worse still--He will take His Holy Spirit from you.

Fruit in your affections. Oh, if Christ had your affections, how it would operate in everything! The wife would not be always grumbling because the husband had to go out three or four evenings a week on the Lord's errands--only let them be the Lord's errands. The husband would not grudge to give his wife up to go to help to win souls, because it deprived him of her society or a few comforts that she might provide for him if she were near. The parents would not grudge to restrain their children as Eli did. He did not restrain them from that which they liked, and you know the fruit it brought. Parents who love God best will not allow their children to learn anything which could not be pressed into the service of God. They will not allow them to run with the giddy multitude, to dance or do anything the devil might inspire them to desire. "No!" they will say, "my children belong to God, and I am going to train them for God and God only." Bless the Lord, He helped me to make up my mind to do that before I became a mother; and He has helped me to keep that promise (though I have not been as faithful to it as I ought), casting aside resolutely every temptation to the contrary. And now He is giving me the fruit of my selfdenial in the souls and labours of my precious children. One after another, as they grow up, they take their natural place in the temple of the Lord, and I believe they shall go out no more for ever. Oh, that parents would do it!

Parents might save their children. I know what a mother's feelings are. I know the temptation there is to see them shine in competition with others, and to excel others. I know it all; but I said, `No; "Get thee behind me, Satan." I will keep them for God;' and He has enabled me to keep them for Him. Bless His holy name!

I loved Him better than I loved them, and, much as I loved them (and those who know me know I do love them), I would see them all in a row laid in their coffins before I would sacrifice His interests and lose their souls. Do you love Him best? Test Yourself. Do you love Him more than all else? Are you holding everything in subordination to Him?

Further, this fruit will come out in our members--our bodies; and oh! there is a deep spiritual meaning which, I trust, many of you know, in those words of the Apostle, "The body is dead because of sin;" but "He shall quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit, that dwelleth in you." It is killed to the Devil, as well as to sin, and all the uses of Satan; but it is quickened by the Spirit for the use of God, so that you can render not only the halves of your lips, but your hands, and eyes, and brain, and heart, and feet, and the whole of your body to Him-your members instruments of righteousness unto God. Hence, such a person will not feel his eyes are his own, to rove at random wherever he lists. Such a person will not feel his tongue is his own, to speak as he pleases. He will

"bridle it," as James says, when tempted to speak unadvisedly. Such a person will not feel that his bands are his own, to waste the time, in which he ought to be doing something for God. Such a person will not feel his feet his own, to carry him where he likes, but where his Master would have him go--his whole body consecrated, and, especially, his tongue--consecrated to God, to testify for Him. He will feel that he must feed his body, as my husband often says, on the same principle that a man feeds his horse to keep it in the best working condition for God--never eating anything that will bring the devils of dyspepsia dancing round his soul. And not only so, with eating and drinking, but all his surroundings and deportment must be in keeping. It is the Lord's body; and, if you love Him best, you will keep it for Him: as the bride and the bridegroom keep themselves for each other, so you will keep it for Him.

This fruit will also appear in our family relations. We shall fulfil the Law to our neighbours. You see, God wants only what we have to give Him. He is not a hard master reaping where He has not sown, and the Great Teacher said,

"This is the first and great commandment," embracing all the rest, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and mind, and soul, and strength," and the second is like unto it, "And thy neighbour as thyself;" and the man who does these is a perfect man, and fulfills the law; and when you have the fullness of love that enables you to love God best and your neighbour as yourself--enables you to do for the souls and bodies of your fellows what you would like that they should do for you, if you changed places, then the Law is fulfilled in you. Such people cannot sit 365 days in the year at the table with unconverted people, and never try to get them saved. Such people cannot abide in the same house with unbelievers, and not make them miserable. Oh, no. The unconverted say, Ìt's too wretched to live here. I must get out of this crying and praying for me all day long.' As a servant once said, she couldn't stand it. She had had praying enough at home, without coming there to have it. She did stand it for six weeks, and broke down at the family altar and GOT

SAVED, and became a preacher afterwards. This spirit of love will make every unconverted sinner within your reach so miserable that they will have to be converted or run away. How would you do if they were DYING? YOU

would run about in every direction to get a minister. What a pity you did not feel like this twelve years ago. You might have got the sinner converted then, and he have been serving the Lord all the time? But, now he is dying, what a stir you make. What a purely selfish religion that is. You want him saved, so that he may get into HEAVEN, not that he might serve, honour, and glorify God. You don't care at all about that. He might live on in disobedience. Oh, be as much concerned for the honour of God as you are for your friend's salvation at the last, and then God will know how to save them.

This fruit will also appear in your church relations. It will bring forth fruit. As the Apostle says, "Exhorting one another daily," not suffering sin in your neighbour; reproving each other, and "confessing your faults one to the other." Where is any of it done? I should like very much to attend such a meeting, if you invite me, where Christians really and honestly confess their faults one to the other, and pray for one another, beseeching the Lord to heal them in those particular points where they have failed, telling one another of the deep things of God and talking lovingly and freely to one another as they used to do. It is part of the communion of saints--"exhort one another daily." The devil is at work daily. The world is plying for us daily. The flesh is pleading daily. Everything evil goes on daily. Why should not this exhorting one another, confessing your faults to one another, and praying for one another go on daily too?

Is it a fact that we are each other's keeper? Is it a fact that God will require for our influence over other souls? I believe it.

Then in our relations to the world--. But I forestalled this in my address on

"Aggressive Effort." And now let us go down on our knees before God and ask Him to work this love in us, and give us this spirit, that we may thus FULFIL THIS LAW in all its relations.

7. Witnessing for Christ

ACTS i. 8 (latter clause).--"Ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." ACTS v. 32.--"And we are His witnesses of these things."

AGAIN and again the same vocation and commission is bestowed upon the apostles and disciples. To the ends of the earth and to the end of time this commission comes down to every one of the Lord's own, for He says: "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." That embraces us. And to every disciple who has preceded, or is to follow us, is promised His Divine Presence in this glorious work of testifying for Him.

God needs witnesses in this world.

Why? Because the whole world is in revolt against Him. The world has gone away from God. The world ignores God, denies and contradicts His testimony, misunderstands His character, government, and purposes, and is gone off into utter and universal revolt and rebellion. Now if God is to keep any hold upon man at all, and have any influence with him, He must be represented down here. There was no other way of doing it. If a province of this realm were in anarchy and rebellion, unless there be some persons in the province whose duty it is to represent the Queen and her Government, it will lapse altogether and be lost to the kingdom for ever. So God must be represented, and, praise His name, He has had His faithful witnesses from the beginning until now. As the Apostle says, "He left not Himself without witness." Down from the days of Enoch, who walked with God, to this present hour, God has always had His true and faithful witnesses. In the worst times there have been some burning and shining lights. Sometimes few and far between, sometimes, like Noah, one solitary man in a whole generation of men, witnessing for God-but one, at least, there has been. God has not left Himself without witness.

But Jesus Christ the Son--the well-beloved of the Father--He was the great witness. He came especially to manifest, to testify of, and to reveal the Father to men. This was His great work. He came not to testify of Himself, but of His Father, not to speak His own words, but the words His Father gave Him to speak. He came to reveal God to men. He was the "Faithful and True Witness." And when He had to leave the world and go back to His Father, then He commissioned His disciples to take His place, and to be God's witnesses on earth. And Oh! friends, God's real people are His only witnesses. He will not allow angels--we do not know why--to witness for Him here. He has called man to witness for Him, His people, "Ye shall be witnesses unto Me."

Jesus "witnessed a good confession," did he not? He witnessed nobly, consistently, bravely, of His Father, and sealed His testimony with His blood. The world treated Him as it has treated most of God's faithful witnesses from the beginning; it persecuted Him; it slew Him, as it would every faithful witness for God--if God allowed it--and would leave itself without a single spiritual light: for the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience hath an eternal and devilish hatred of every real, living, spiritual child of God. It hates him as it hated the Son Himself, and it is not the Devil's fault if he does not extinguish and exterminate every such witness. It is because God will not allow him, but holds us, keeps us, saves us, in spite of him.

The Lord commissioned, then, His disciples to be His witnesses, and He said-oh! beautiful words, and yet, how much they involve which few understand." As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so send I them into the world." Even so: as Thou hast sent Me to be Thy representative in the world, to spend and be spent for Thee, and shed My blood for Thee, if necessary, so send I them and so He did send them, and they had just the same fare as their Master, and many of them just the same end. But they were faithful witnesses, and they went forward and testified everywhere, to the Jews and to the Gentiles, in the Temple and in the Market Place, by the wayside and in the highways and hedges--they went and testified of this Saviour, and charged the wicked Jews with His crucifixion, and God accompanied their testimony by the Spirit, and thousands upon thousands were converted--turned from their rebellion to God.

Now, the fact that witnessing is necessary shows that there is controversy going on in the world as to the things and claims of God--that there are two sides to this. The great mass of mankind say, that God's truth is a lie. They say it virtually, if they do not say it in words; and many thousands of them, alas, in words, also. They deny, many of them, His very existence, and say there is neither Heaven nor Hell--that Jesus Christ was a mere man--that religion is a myth, and that there is no such thing as the knowledge of forgiveness of sins--that this witnessing is a grand delusion of the imagination, and nothing further.

Now, Christ calls His people to go and be witnesses to these facts. Witnesses, you know, must deal with facts, not theories--not what they merely think, or suppose, or have heard, but what they know. Now God wants His people to witness to facts--to something that has been done, and is being done--something that is and continues to be fact.

And He wants us to be GOOD witnesses, too. Oh! how much depends upon the character of a witness even in an earthly court. If you can cast a reflection upon the character or the veracity of a witness, you shake his testimony, and take away its value. Oh! how important that Christ's witnesses should be good witnesses--that is, that they should fairly and truly represent Him and His truth--for, if they misrepresent Him, somebody is sure to be damned through their inconsistency--and, how awful to have the blood of souls upon our skirts!

To misrepresent a man, or woman, or child, is bad enough, but to misrepresent God!--to show a caricature of the religion of Jesus Christ!--to live a wrong life and still profess to be a Christian, saying to people, virtually,

"Look at me the way I live and act--WHAT I Am--this is the religion of Jesus Christ." I say, such a man had far better have a millstone hanged about his neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. There, would, then, be an end of his mischief; but a false witness on behalf of Jesus Christ is the most mischievous traitor on the face of the earth. He does more harm than a thousand false hostile witnesses against Him. Oh! my friends, to be good witnesses for Jesus Christ. The more a witness is supposed to know of the truth to which he testifies, the greater his responsibility. Oh! for a minister to be a bad witness, as some of the prophets of old were. Look at the awful things God says about them that lead His people into the ditch, caring more about the fleece than the sheep--awful! For a mother to be a bad witness in her family, and to take her little children, clinging on to her skirts, right to the edge of the pit! For a master to be a bad witness--to profess to be a Christian, and to be a bad witness before his men; for a Sunday school teacher to be a bad, inconsistent, false witness of Jesus Christ in his class; for members of Christian churches to be bad witnesses to one another, and to the world; who can tell the awful results? Oh! it is this inconsistent witnessing that has lowered and lowered the standard of practical Christianity till we have not got any standard left--till the landmarks are so obliterated, that there are not any to be seen.

FAITHFUL witnesses! He wants us to be faithful witnesses.

I want to note one or two qualifications of a faithful Witness, and, oh, may the Holy Spirit help us.

The first qualification, then, of a faithful witness, is A personal knowledge of the facts to which he witnesses. If a witness in a court of justice begins to talk of what he thinks, feels, and believes, "Oh! hush, hush," says the judge, "we can't have that; we want to know what YOU KNOW--what you have seen, heard, and felt of this case;" and these are the sort of witnesses Jesus Christ wants, who can get up and say, "I KNOW!" The sort of witness that St. Paul was, who could look his judge in the face and say, "I would that thou wert altogether such as I am, save these bonds." What an impudent man he must have been, if he was not a sanctified man. What a supreme egotist! Those are the sort of witnesses. How Agrippa must have felt, just then. How the tables were turned. "Oh! I am turned into the dock, and here is the prisoner taking his seat upon the bench." That is the sort of witnessing we want. "I would that thou wert altogether such as I am, except these bonds." Could you stand up in the dock and say that? Could you stand up in your own house and say it?

Could you stand up anywhere and say it? That is what the Lord Jesus Christ wants people who know, who experience, who realize, who live the things they witness to. This is what the world is dying for--people who can get up and say, "I KNOW." The Lord wants people to tell the world they are saved. Can you? They will begin to listen to you then. You will begin to have some effect on them. They will begin to open their eyes and ears, and wonder whether it will be possible for God to save them. This is altogether different from a finespun theory about religion--this telling them that God has SAVED You. Not what we have learned in books. The world is sick of that. I don't wonder at intelligent men flying off from religion. I can make great excuse when I think what many of them have to listen to from Sunday to Sunday. As a gentleman said to me, Ìt's enough to sicken anybody. We do get something in The Times, but, upon my word, I can't keep awake at church. It is not that I would not, if I could, but I can't.' Poor fellow! how I pitied him.

No! not what is got from books; not a dry, finespun theory, from mere hearsay. When a witness begins with what he heard someone say, Òh, hush! says the judge, `we don't want that, we want to know what you have seen. Keep to the facts.' Jesus Christ wants you to keep to the facts. Tell them, as John says, what you have seen, and heard, and handled, and realized of the truth of God. Personal knowledge! It is wonderful how simple salvation language is, when you have learnt it by experience and are prepared to speak plainly to the people.

Then, a faithful witness must tell the truth, and the whole truth. He must not hold back anything on account of personal inconvenience, suffering, loss, or gain, but must tell the whole truth. Oh! I tremble to think what will be the fate of some who set themselves up as teachers, and who have "kept back part" of the truth because, to their apprehension, it was not palatable or profitable to mankind. What have I got to do with that? I have to preach the truth--the beautiful, whole, round, diamond, luminous with Divine light, and not a base, muddy, paste imitation, half truths manufactured into damning errors, by which Satan is decoying thousands to Hell. Give men the whole truth--both sides: the side that relates to God; and the side that relates to man; and be done with the nonsense of making God contradict Himself, for "God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." If there were contradictions, there would be darkness. No; the darkness is in our own poor, blind, puny brains, and not in God or in His Book. In His Book, rightly interpreted, there is no contradiction whatsoever. The whole truth: the convicting truth as well as the healing truth; the sword as well as the balm; the running in of the Divine knife as well as the pouring in of the Divine oil. As Paul says, in the 26th chapter and 18th verse,

"To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins." He says he preached to the Jews and Gentiles that they should repent. This is the Apostle Paul, the great expounder of Justification by Faith, "That they should repent," and what?--oh, you legal Paul, what? "Do works meet for repentance." Oh, Paul, I thought you were saved from works altogether, and had done with the Law. Oh! you preach works, and doing works meet for repentance. That is not Gospel, Paul! He significantly adds, "For this cause the Jews caught me, and tried to kill me:" and for that cause the Pharisees have been trying to kill God's true, whole-truth witnesses ever since, for they don't like the doctrine that cuts idols and sin in twain, and that says, "Bring forth fruits meet for repentance."

The faithful witness must give the whole truth and he must give it personally, too. A faithful witness must give it himself. He can't witness by proxy. He may pay one hundred and fifty evangelists to go and witness in his place: that is all right. It is no more than he ought to do--two hundred and fifty, if he has money enough--because the Master claims all that he has, little or much, every farthing of it, however many preachers he may send and maintain.

Therefore, he can never do any more than he ought, but that will not exonerate him from the personal obligation. God will say to him: If I have put my candle in you, it is that it may shine for somebody else's benefit. If I have given you the bread of life, it is for you to go and break it to the famishing multitudes round about you. YE are my witnesses. You may pay the minister and the missionary, but you must do it yourself, too, for how can one witness make up for two? True, God wants the minister to witness, and it is no more than his duty if he witnesses all day long as long as be lives. But that will never make up for your lack of service. YOU must witness; and there are some souls with whom you have more influence than any other living being-some souls that you can better get at than any other person--some souls that, if you do not save, will, probably, never be saved at all. Ye are my witnesses, and, if ye have the grace and love and light of God, it is at the peril of your soul if you hide it.

Then, in the next place, faithful witnesses must speak out, not mince the matter--not "mumble," as they say in court. The judge makes the witness speak up so that everybody may hear him. He must be heard. "Speak out." And why should not the Lord's witnesses speak out? I wonder when we shall be done with this sneaking, hole-and-comer, shame-faced religion! I wonder when Christian England will cease to be ashamed of its God!! The only nation under Heaven ashamed of its religion and its God is the one that has got the true God to worship and to love. What an anomaly; Speak out!!

David knew nothing about this mincing, half-and-half, milk-and-water sort of religion. David rejoiced to tell of his righteousness before the great congregation. He was always telling about His goodness, and His Law, and singing about it all the day long, dancing before the ark sometimes, and doing all manner of demonstrative things to glorify his God. And that was not enough, for when he had called upon all human kind to praise Him, he called on the hills and the trees to clap their hands and to dance for joy. We want some of that sort of religion nowadays. Talk of the new dispensation, I wish we could get a bit of the old one back.

The interests of truth demand this out-spokedness. How is error to be met but by the bold proclamation of the truth? How are the emissaries of Satan palming upon mankind his lies--always at it, night and day--how are they to be silenced but by witnesses faithfully crying in their ears, "This is a lie, and that is a lie. This is the truth and this is the way; we know, we see, we feel--walk ye in it." Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die? They want out-spoken witnesses. There are plenty of false witnesses now, as there ever were, and what does Jesus Christ want? He wants His true witnesses to come out and face them, and be a match for them--not to sneak away in holes and corners, and be ashamed of their religion, and talk about an "unobtrusive religion" unobtrusive nonsense. There is no such thing! Come out before the world. As Elijah said, "If the Lord be God, follow Him, serve Him, speak for Him; "but if Baal" be God, "then follow him." Then away with all this nonsense, your sanctuaries, and Bibles, and profession--have done with it all and follow Baal. Be one thing or the other. Methinks there wants an Elijah now to come and ring it through all England. I would like to see any man get up and make a straightforward recognition of, and appeal to, God in our Houses of Parliament, and I would like to see how he would be greeted.

I was thinking, as I was passing the Royal Exchange and saw on the top, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof," how many believed it who walked beneath its shadow. I wonder what anyone would be thought of, were he practically to recognize the fact. Òh!' they would say, `he's not fit for his post-you'll have to take him away; he's a little affected in his head.' Oh! you know it is so; but God is not mocked, though men think He is. God sits in the circle of Heaven, and though the people do rage, and the heathen imagine a vain thing, and the kings of the earth set themselves, He is laughing at them, and by-and-by will come their calamity.

We say the world is dying; what for? Sermons? No. Periodicals? No. Religious stories? Oh! dear no. There is no chance of a want of them for many a long year to come. Dying for disquisitions? No. For fine-spun theories? No. For creeds and faiths? Oh! you might have them by the dozen. What is it dying for?--downright, straightforward, honest, loving, earnest testimony about what God can DO FOR SOULS. That is what it wants. That is what those poor men in the shops, those walking up and down Oxford Street, in the theatres, in the dancing saloons, in the concert rooms, everywhere, that is what men want: somebody to come and take them lovingly by the collar, and tell them that GOD IS GOD, and that He can save them. `He has saved me, my brother, and He can save you!' That is what the world wants. One word like that is better than a sermon, and it will do more for God and the salvation of the world. Oh, yes, men are saying, in fact all over this land-thousands, `Here I am; I am a poor slave of sin. I know it.' They say it in their consciences, though they do not say it to you. They say it often to us when they are pushed into a corner by the sword of the Spirit. Ì know I am wrong, sinful, wicked.' As that dear John Allen, whose life I have been telling about, said once when sitting swearing, surrounded by his companions, and somebody said to him, `Jock, if you were to die, what would become of you?'

Ì should go to hell, straight!' He was an honest fellow. He knew where he was going, and he said it.

I said to a gentleman, `Mr. So-and-so, what about your soul?' He said, Ìt's in a devilish state.' Poor man! He knew where he was going, and there are thousands like him. Do you think they don't feel their bondage? Have they not got a mind and a conscience? Have they not a better side, as you call it, to their nature? Has not God flashed the light of His Holy Spirit upon their dark souls, and have they not struggled and striven? Yes, but they say, 6 There is no health in us; there is no help for us. We have done making resolutions and trying to be better; we cannot. There is no hope in us.' And there they are waiting for somebody to come and tell them there is HELP IN GOD. They say, Ì see precious little difference in you religious folks. I have never known anybody that religion has seemed to do much for.' And, when they are told to believe, they laugh at you, and I don't wonder at it. The poor human conscience is better instructed than many of its teachers. It wants to be put RIGHT, and it says, Is there any hope? Can God save such as I am? Has He saved anybody like me from this thraldom, from this slavery, from this misery, from this constantly going down in the mud? Did He ever save anybody LIKE

ME? And sometimes he goes to chapel or church, and hopes the minister will tell him, when lo, he begins a dissertation about the resurrection, or the divinity of Christ, or something the man has believed all his life, and so he is disappointed again, and he says, `This is of no use to me.' Oh! friends, I speak the things I know from testimony of scores of souls. In fact, I could not repeat it, it would make your faces burn to hear what men of intelligence, thought, and standing have said to me in many an ante-room where I have been labouring. It is time there was a change. The world is famishing for lack of real spiritual bread. It wants something to eat, and you give it a stone! but God is raising a people who know what it wants and how to give it, who know how to break the bread of life, and testify what God has done for them, and what He can do for other poor famishing souls; who can go and say: `Here my friend, He can save such as you. I was such a one once. I was a slave of sin, the slave of drink, or a blasphemer, or a liar, or a thief, or addicted to some bad secret habit worse than any of these. I was such a slave, and He has saved me. He has broken my fetters and set me free, and I am the Lord's free-man. He has saved me and He can save you,' That is what the world wants--TESTIMONY WITNESSING.

Has He saved any of you? Are you testifying to your poor, famishing, sinking fellow-men? Do you ever look at them and think where they are going? Do you pity them, love them, long after them in the bowels of Jesus Christ? Do you know anything of that longing? If so, how can you forbear testifying? "Ye are my witnesses of these things," everywhere, at all times, amongst all people!!

It is in the nature of the case that a witness must witness before other people, before living hearers. That is the place to witness, and before enemies, and when he does not know which way the wind will blow, or how the words of God will be received. He must be a true witness, even if he has to seal his testimony with his blood.

This was the kind of witnessing the martyrs did. I often wonder whether there would be any martyrs now. Sometimes I think that the greatest boon to the Church of Christ would be a time of persecution. I believe it would. I believe it would drive us up to God and each other. We should find out, then, whether we were willing to forsake all to follow Him. You know that if the martyrs had taken the standard of religious life that exists now, they would never have been martyrs. They would have looked after their own skins, and left the Lord to look after the Gospel. If they might have been allowed a little latitude, and gone halfway, there would not have been any martyrs, because they could nearly all have got off with that; but they felt it necessary to be faithful right through, and to stand by the whole truth to the very last jot and tittle, and when they could have got off by saying three words on a paper, they refused to do it, and went to the stake, and let the flames lick up their blood. Those are the witnesses the Lord wants outside, everywhere, always at it. Always witnessing. Àlways,' you say. Yes; always. Why? Because men are always dying and being damned! If the Bible is true--everywhere--your friends and your neighbours around you. You get a letter: Òh! Mr. So-and-so is dead-only ill three days--thirty-six hours--twenty-four hours--gone!' Ah! and the echo in many a soul afterwards is, what would I give for a chance to go and have one talk with him. But he's gone--somewhere! Where is he gone? If he were unwashed and unpardoned and unsaved--where is he gone? I got so wrought up once upon this point that I thought I should have lost my reason. I could not sleep at night with thinking of the state of those who die unsaved. Dare I think about it? WHERE IS HE GONE? Oh! it was this view of the case that led me to open my mouth first in public for God.

I have promised some friends here tonight to give this illustration from my own experience, or else I rarely refer to it. I had long had a controversy on this question in my soul. In fact, from the time I was converted, the Spirit of God had constantly been urging me into paths of usefulness and labour, which seemed to me impossible. Perhaps some of you would hardly credit that I was one of the most timid and bashful disciples the Lord Jesus ever saved. For ten years of my Christian life my life was one daily battle with the cross--not because I wilfully rejected, as many do, for that I never dared to do. Oh, no! I used to make up my mind I would, and resolve and intend, and then, when the hour came, I used to fail for want of courage. I need not have failed. I now see how foolish I was, and how wrong; but, for some four or five months before I commenced speaking, the controversy had been signally roused in my soul which God had awakened years before, but, which, through mistaken notions, fear, and timidity, I had allowed almost to die out. I was brought to very severe heart-searchings at this time. I had not been realizing so much of the Divine presence. I had lost a great deal of the power and happiness I once enjoyed. During a season of sickness, one day it seemed as if the Lord revealed it all to me by His Spirit. I had no vision, but a revelation to my mind. He seemed to take me back to the time when I was fifteen and sixteen, when I first gave my heart to Him. He seemed to show me, all the bitter way, how this one thing had been the fly in the pot of ointment, the bitter in the cup, and prevented me from realizing what I should otherwise have done. I felt how it had hindered the revelation of Himself to me, and hindered me from growing in grace, and learning more of the deep things of God. He showed it to me, and then I remember prostrating myself upon my face before Him, and I promised Him there in the sick room: `Lord, if Thou wilt return unto me, as in the days of old, and re-visit me with those urgings of Thy Spirit which I used to have, I will obey, if I die in the attempt. I care not; I will obey.' However, the Lord did not re-visit me immediately. He let me recover, and I went out again. About three months after that I went to the chapel of which my husband was a minister, and he had an extraordinary service. Even then he was ever trying something new to get the outside people. They were having a meeting in which ministers and friends in the town were taking part, and all giving their testimony and speaking for God. I was in the minister's pew, with my eldest boy, then four years old, and there were some thousand people present. I felt much more depressed than usual in spirit, and not expecting anything particular, but, as the testimonies went on, I felt the Spirit come upon me. You alone who have felt it know what it means. It cannot be described. I felt it to the extremities of my fingers and toes. It seemed as if a voice said to me,

`Now, if you were to go and testify, you know I would bless it to your own soul as well as to the souls of the people,' and I gasped again, and I said, in my soul, `Yes, Lord, I believe Thou wouldst, but I cannot do it.' I had forgotten my vow--it did not occur to me at all. All in a moment, after I had said that to the Lord I seemed to see the bedroom where I had lain, and to see myself as though I had been there prostrate before the Lord promising Him that, and then the voice seemed to say to me, Ìs this consistent with that promise?' and I almost jumped up and said, `No, Lord, it is the old thing over again, but I cannot do it,' and I felt as though I would sooner die than do it. And then the Devil said, `Besides, you are not prepared to speak. You will look like a fool, and have nothing to say.' He made a mistake. He overdid himself for once. It was that word settled it. I said, Àh! this is just the point. I have never yet been willing to be a fool for Christ, now I will be one;' and without stopping another moment, I rose up in the seat, and walked up the chapel. My dear husband was just going to conclude. He thought something had happened to me, and so did the people. We had been there two years, and they knew my timid, bashful nature. He stepped down to ask me. `What is the matter, my dear.' I said, Ì want to say a word,' He was so taken by surprise, he could only say,

`My dear wife wants to say a word,' and sat down. He had been trying to persuade me to do it for ten years. He and a lady in the church, only that very week, had been trying to persuade me to go and address a little cottage meeting, of some twenty working people, but could not. I got up--God only knows how--and if any mortal ever did hang on the arm of Omnipotence, I did. I felt as if I were clinging to some human arm--and yet it was a Divine arm--to hold me. I just got up and told the people how it came about. I confessed, as I think everybody should, when they have been in the wrong and misrepresented the religion of Jesus Christ. I told the people, although I had been occupying all the ordinary positions of a minister's wife, though I was young then, I had been doing a great deal more than many an elderly one does in the Church of God, in the way of meeting believers, and visiting and working behind the scenes, so that they had all been regarding me as a very devoted woman, and I told them so. I said Ì dare say many of you have been looking upon me as a very devoted woman, and one who has been living faithfully to God, but I have come to know that I have been living in disobedience, and to that extent I have brought darkness and leanness into my soul, but I promised the Lord three or four months ago, and I dare not disobey. I have come to tell you this, and to promise the Lord that I will be obedient to the Heavenly vision.'

But oh! how little I saw then what it involved. I never imagined the life of publicity it was going to lead me into, and of trial also; for I was never allowed to have another quiet Sabbath, when I could speak or stand up. All I took there was the present step. I did not see in advance, but the Lord, as He always does, when His people are honest with Him, and obedient, opened the windows of Heaven, and poured out such a blessing, that there was not room to contain it.

There was more weeping, they said, in the chapel that day, than ever there had been before. Many dated a renewal in righteousness from that very moment, and began a life of devotion and consecration to God.

Now, I might have I talked good to them till now, and that would never have happened. That honest confession, coming out and testifying the truth, did what twenty years talk would never have done.

The work went on. Whenever I spoke, the chapel used to be crowded to its utmost capacity, and numbers were converted. Not to me but to God be all the glory. Shame to me that I did not begin sooner. It was not I that did this, but the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit of God.

The Lord dealt with me in a very wonderful way. Three months after this, my dear husband fell sick for the first time, and he was obliged to go away into the country. A deputation waited on me, to ask me to take his town appointments. I said I could not think of such a thing. What could I do with that great congregation? They must not ask me--and away they went. They came back again to know if I would take the nights, they implored and importuned me until I promised. So you see, God forced me to begin to think and work. I was obliged, and I did it with four little children, the eldest then four years and three months old. It looked an inopportune time, did it not, to begin to preach?

It looked as though the Lord must have made a mistake. However, He gave me grace and strength, and enabled me to do it; and while I was nursing my baby, many a time I was thinking of what I was going to say next Sunday, and between times noted down with a pencil the thoughts as they struck me. And then I would appear sometimes, with an outline scratched in pencil, trusting in the Lord to give me the power of His Holy Spirit; and I think I can say that from that day and it is about nineteen years and nine months since He has never allowed me to open my mouth without giving me signs of His presence and blessing. Don't you see that while the Devil kept me silent, he kept me comparatively fruitless; now I have ground to hope and expect to meet hundreds in Glory, whom God has made me instrumental in saving. The Lord dealt very tenderly with me: giving me great encouragement, but some things were dreadful to me at first. I would not go into pulpits till the people demanded it. And the first time I saw my name on a wall! I shall never forget the sensation. Then my dear husband said, `When you gave yourself to the Lord, did you not give Him your name?' Thus he used to go from one thing to another, until now I have learned to glory in the Cross. When a dear friend was talking, the other day, about the tremendous undertaking it was to go to France and begin there; I said, `My dear sir, I should not feel any more discomposed to go to France, and open there next Sunday, than I should to appear in St. Andrew's Hall, simply for this reason, that I believe God is the same in every place, and the same faith, and the same truths and the same faithfulness will bring Him to our help.' "Ye are my witnesses," saith the Lord,

"And, lo, I am with you ALWAYS!"

Will you be encouraged, my sister? Never mind trembling. I trembled. Never mind your heart beating. Mine beat nearly through. Never mind how weak you are. I have gone many a time from the bed to the pulpit, and back from the pulpit to bed. It is not by human power, wisdom, might, or strength--it is by my Spirit, saith the Lord. He loves to use the weak things, that the excellency may be seen to be of God. If your neighbours were sick of some devastating plague, and you could go and help them, would not you do it? Would you say, Ì am only a woman, and I cannot?' Òh,' you would say, "let me go, like Miss Nightingale did to the sick and wounded soldiers. Let me go.' And these are not the bodies, but the souls. They are dying. They are going to an eternal death. Will you not rise up? Oh! suppose all the Christians in this hall to-night were to begin, from this hour, to be faithful, and consistently testifying everywhere for Jesus, what a commotion there would be! How many, think you, would be converted in a month's time? How would they begin flocking like doves to the windows? How would the ministers, some of them, begin to wake up? The people would go and beseech them morning, noon, and night. God wants you to witness right out everywhere, in the darkest courts and alleys and in Oxford Street alike. Begin, and the Spirit of God will fall upon you, and however they may try to get rid of the Holy Ghost, they will not be able to do it when God has got hold of them. We catch thousands of people in this way who never intended to be converted. Every day I live, the more I am convinced that if God's people were to be in desperate earnest, thousands would be won; but they are not likely to be won by the genteel fashion of putting the truth before them--so common nowadays--because nobody thinks they are in any danger! If you believe it, begin. The Apostle says you are to be good, valiant soldiers of Jesus Christ: the old Christians were all this; they fought a good warfare, and they overcame the Devil by the "blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony." Be soldiers for the Lord, and He will give the victory, and you shall go and take prisoners. Great big giants, black-hearted infidels, black-hearted blasphemers, they shall go down before you like little children, because the Lord of Hosts will put His Spirit in you. "Ye are My witnesses." Witness! WITNESS!! of Me everywhere and always. The Lord help you. Amen.

8. Filled with the Spirit

ACTS i. 4.--"And being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father." EPHESIANS V. 18.-"Be filled with the Spirit."

I THOUGHT, perhaps, it would meet a difficulty of some who are present this afternoon, to state, with respect to last Sabbath's address, that this exhortation to be filled with the Spirit is given broadly to all believers. If my remarks, at that time, conveyed the idea to anyone, that there were merely a privileged few who are called to be thus filled with the Spirit--to be, as it were, the leaders of the rest, and others were to abide, and must abide, on a lower platform of Christian experience, I certainly did not intend them to do so. God forbid that I should insinuate anything of the kind, because I do not believe it. I believe that this injunction is given broadly to all believers everywhere, and in all times, and it is as much the privilege of the youngest and weakest believer here to be filled with the Spirit, as it is of the most advanced, if the believer will comply with the conditions, and conform to the injunctions of the Saviour, on which He has promised this gift. I do not find two standards of Christian experience here at all. I do not believe God ever intended there should be a lower life and a higher life, and I am afraid that those people who rest in the lower life will find themselves awfully mistaken at last. I believe that religion is all or nothing. God is either first or He is nowhere with us, individually. The very essence and core of religion is, "God first," and allegiance and obedience to Him first.

If I cannot keep my father and mother and be faithful to God, then I must forsake my father and mother. If I cannot keep my husband or wife, and be faithful to Him, then I must forsake husband or wife. If I cannot keep my children and be faithful to Him, then, Jesus Christ says, forsake them. And if I cannot keep my houses and lands and be faithful to Him, then I must forsake them. If I cannot keep my business and be faithful to Him, then I must sacrifice my business, and if I cannot keep my health and be faithful to Him, then I must sacrifice it, and, last of all, if I cannot keep my life and be faithful to Him, then I must be prepared to lose it, and lay my neck on the block, if need be. That is my religion, and I do not know any other. I do not believe any other will stand on the right hand of the throne; and, if that be so, why, all other sorts must stand on the left. If this be not true, I am utterly and thoroughly mistaken in the first principles of Christianity, and I will come and sit down at anybody's feet who can convince me that I am wrong. So, pray, do not attach that idea to me that I think that any person can sit down, providing he has light, or with opportunities of getting light, without embracing this higher-life religion, and then get into Heaven in this shame-faced, sneaking way. No, no!

God will have you, or He will not have you. He will know you, or will say,

"Depart from Me, I know you not." The Lord help you every one.

This Pentecost is offered to all believers. It comes, or it would come, in the experience of every believer, if he would have it. God wants you to have it. God calls you to it. Jesus Christ has bought it for you, and you may have it and live in its power as much as these apostles did, if you will--every one of you. My dear friends, you may have it, be filled with it, and no one but God knows what He would do with you, and what He would make of you if you were thus filled, for the experience of Peter shows you how utterly different a man is before he gets a Pentecostal baptism and after be gets it. The man who could not stand the questionings of a servant-maid before he got this power, dared to be crucified after he got it. I may just say, that hero is the great cause of the decline of so many who begin well. Oh! there is no more common lament on the lips of really spiritual teachers, everywhere, than this, that so many begin well. "Ye did run well," we might truly say of thousands in this land today, "Ye did run well." They begin in the Spirit, and then, as the Apostle says, "They go on to be made perfect by the flesh." How is this?

Because, you see, the Spirit puts before every soul this walk of full consecration and whole-hearted devotedness to God, and, instead of being obedient to the heavenly vision, the soul shrinks back and says, `That is too much--that is too close--that is too great a sacrifice,' and they decline, and, instead of giving up a profession and going back into the world (there would be ten times more hope of them if they did that) they cling on to the profession and kindle a fire of their own, and walk in the sparks they have kindled. But He says He is against them, and "they shall lie down in sorrow." Oh! there is a deal of this. People must have a God and a religion. They will have one, and when they shrink from the true one, and will not follow the Divine counsel, then they make one for themselves, and a great many of them go to sleep and never wake again. They go out of the world comfortably under the influence of narcotics, and they never wake. They die deceived; or, if they do awake, we know what sort of an awakening it is, and what sort of deathbed theirs is. Our poor Salvation Army people--these "fishermen,"--these young women--are sent for to pray with these people when they get awakened. And oh! what scenes are witnessed. Oh! see to it that you get awake and keep awake, and be willing to follow the Spirit's teaching, in everything, at all costs and sacrifices.

I want you to note, first, how these people waited.

"Tarry at Jerusalem till ye be endued with POWER." Mark, that is not truth merely. They had got truth before. There is something besides truth needed. Paul says his Gospel and his preaching were not merely in word, but in power, and in the demonstration of the Spirit. What would be the first thing that would strike you that these disciples would be thinking of, as they wended their way back from Olivet, having taken leave of their now glorified Master?

Back again to the upper room at Jerusalem. Imagine what state of mind would be theirs. How would they wait for the promise?

Methinks the first feeling would be that of deep self-abasement. As they thought of the past; now that the full glory of His Divinity, and the Divinity of His mission had burst upon them, and, as they thought of their three years'

sojourn with Him, and of all their darkness and blindness of heart, and all they had lost--all that they might have known-all He would have revealed to them, if they would have received it--as the thought of it all burst upon them just as, next day, when you find out who a person was, or some particular circumstance respecting a person that you did not fully understand at the time, and, when the person is gone, and it all breaks upon you, you say,

`What a fool I was,' and so methinks these apostles would say, indeed, as He said, "Oh, fools, and slow of heart to believe!" They were cured. Peter certainly was of self-sufficiency, of pride, and all of them would go back again in deep self-abasement.

Can you not think you see them, as they assembled in the upper room? I should not be surprised at all if Peter, with his impulsive nature--and it is a glorious thing to have an impulsive nature when it is impulsive for good--to be zealously affected always in a good cause--threw himself on his face before his risen Master in deepest humiliation and broken-heartedness for his base ingratitude in having denied Him. And how do you think Thomas and all of them would feel as they remembered the scene in the Garden, and how they all in the hour of His agony, forsook Him and fled? How would they all feel?

Oh! they would feel indeed unholy, untrue, cowards, and would go down, over and over again, on their faces, to wait in deep self-abasement.

And now, friends, this is the very first and indispensable condition of receiving the Holy Ghost. You must first realize your past impurity, unholiness, disobedience, and ingratitude. You must not be afraid to know the worst of yourselves. You must look back at the time when your hand has been with Him on the table, and yet you have virtually betrayed Him. You must look at your unfaithfulness and disobedience, at your shrinking from the cross, at your cleaving to the world, and if you want to be filled with the Spirit, you must be willing to know the worst of yourself, and tell the Lord the worst of yourself. You must say, `Now, Lord, am I low enough? Now, Lord, am I down far enough in the dust for Thee to come and lift me up? I abhor myself. I loathe myself in dust and ashes, and I want Thee to come and fill me with Thy Spirit.'

You will have to be emptied of self. When people are self-sufficient, God always leaves them alone to prove their self-sufficiency. When people think they can do for themselves, He lets them fall down and see their weakness. We must realize our utter helplessness and weakness--we must be utterly lost in our own sight. Some of you, I think, have come to that, and others are not quite low enough. You must get down lower, my brother. God's way to exaltation is through the Valley of Humiliation. You must get lower--lower. You can never get too low in your own estimation in order to be filled with the Spirit of God. They waited, secondly, in earnest appreciation of its importance. Ah!

they had enough to make them do it. How do you think they felt when they got into the upper room? We are told that there were about 120 of them. How do you think they felt as they thought of the past, remembered the ignominious crucifixion of their Lord, looked forward to the future, and contemplated the work to which He had called them? And what was it? It was not to go and set up an idol of Jesus Christ alongside of other idols in the temples of heathen gods, but it was to go into the city of Jerusalem, where they had just crucified Him between two thieves, and proclaim Him as the long-expected Messiah of the Jews. It was to begin to set up the Royal Spiritual Kingdom in contradistinction to their temporal and earthly kingdom, and then to go out from Jerusalem and subjugate the world to His sway! How would they feel?

Poor Peter, and Thomas, and John, and Mary and the rest of the women (thanks to the Holy Ghost, He has taken care to put it in that they were there)-how would they feel? They would feel, `We might as well stop and die here, as go out as we are, until we do get the equipment of power. We want something more than we have got.' And there they waited, and they said,

`Lord, pour it out upon us; we are ready. We are helpless, we are powerless-we can do nothing. Thou knowest what Thou hast called us to do, and Thou hast promised this power to perform it. Now, here we are. It is useless for us to begin until we get power.' They appreciated its importance. God never gave this gift to any human soul who had not come to the point that he would sell all he had to get it. Oh! it is the most precious gift He has to give in earth or in Heaven--to be filled with the Spirit, filled with Himself (as we said last Sunday), taken possession of by God; moved, inspired, energized, empowered by God, by the great indwelling Spirit moving through all our faculties, and energizing our whole being for Him. That is the greatest and most glorious gift He has. He is not likely to give it to people who do not highly appreciate it, and so highly that they are willing to forego all other gifts for it-everything else, creature love, creature comfort, ease, enjoyment, and aggrandizement for this one thing. Have you come to that? Are you telling the Lord so? Are you sincere? If you are really sincere in what some of you write me, then some of you have come to it; but, oh, how people can deceive themselves. My heart has been awfully pained during this last week with one or two instances of this kind that have come to my notice. I have been half the week, I think, with Elijah under the juniper tree. I have cried, "Lord, who hath believed our report?" Who will thus take hold of God for this special and full salvation? Alas! How few. One draws back for one reason, and another for another. One feels how far they come with us. You can hear the tread of their feet, and you can hear how they falter and draw back. None but those who travail for souls can ever understand the agony of feeling that souls are drawing back when you have brought them on the road so far. I have thought many a time of the Saviour, when so many who had been hearing Him forsook Him and fled. It was after He had been trying to lead them higher, even to real spiritual union with Himself.

They were not willing to go all the way--to pay all the price to suffer all the consequences--but, if you want this blessing, I know no other way. I had to come to this before I got it. The last idol of my soul had to be renounced, and it was hard work, as it always is, because we love idols. Idols would not be idols if they were not beloved. But we have to lay our real Isaac, our beloved and only Isaac, upon the altar. It is hard work, but it has to be done, because He is a jealous God, and will have no rivals. Do you so appreciate this blessing that you are willing to give up your Isaac? If so, you may have it this afternoon. He will fill you with His Spirit.

Third, and lastly, they waited in obedient faith. How do we know? Because they did as He bid them that is the evidence. He said, "Go, tarry in the city of Jerusalem." Peter might have said, when he had seen his Lord off to Heaven,

`Well, what am I going to do now? I have been a long time running after the Lord in Palestine, I must betake myself to the fishing. I can wait as well on the sea beach as in Jerusalem. I wonder why the Lord told me to go to Jerusalem? I think it was rather unreasonable. He might have thought of my old father and mother at home. I think I shall go back to my fishing-nets.' No, no, they had been cured of their unbelief by the last few days' experience. They had learned better than to dictate to their Master, and they knew He had a good purpose in sending them to Jerusalem, and so they went there and did as He bade them--straight. Back to that upper room they went. Mary might have said, Ì have been running about ministering to the Saviour a long time, I'm afraid my friends will think I am neglecting home duties and the claims of old friends. I really must go home and see to matters a bit; I may as well wait there for the Holy Ghost as at Jerusalem.' No, Mary had learned better. She went back to Jerusalem. We have got their names. And they entered into the upper room, and shut the door, and waited--obedient faith! One of your poets said--

"Obedient faith that waits on Thee,

Thou never wilt reprove."

No, it is the disobedient faith that is sent empty away. Oh! people are crying out about their faith, but it is their disobedient faith. If the Lord has told you to wait in any particular place, or way, or company, or time, and you disobey Him, you will never get it, and you will have to come to those conditions at last, even if it is on your dying bed!

Obedient faith! While there is a spark of insubordination, or rebellion, or dictation, you will never get it. Truly submissive and obedient souls only enter this kingdom. Anywhere He tells you to go, anything He tells you to sacrifice, or fly from, you will have to do. This is one of His choice gifts that He has reserved for His choice servants, those who serve Him with all their hearts.-Obedient faith!

But you say, `How do you know it was faith?' Oh, because we know they did as He bade them. Now, faith is inseparable from expectation. Where there is real faith there is always expectation, and when I hear people praying, as I often do, from their throats, for the Holy Ghost, and see how they talk the minute they get up from their knees, and know how they live and whom they associate with, and how they spend their time, I say, `Yes, you may pray till your dying day, but you will never get it.' If they expected anything, they would wait for it: common sense tells us that.

Those people waited. How long? What a hue and cry there is now about us Salvation Army people spending whole nights in prayer. People--Christians, grey-headed Christians, up and down the country--say to me, Ì don't know how you get the time over. It must be such an immensely long time. Do you really mean to say that you spend all night in prayer?' I say, `Yes, with just an interval for putting the truth and showing the people how to apply it to their own consciences.' Then they say, Ìt must seem an awfully long time.' I suppose it does, to them, to spend one whole night in prayer; but here, we are told, they waited ten days, till the Day of Pentecost was fully come. I have no doubt they went as far into the night as they could keep their natural powers awake. They waited. They did not set the Lord a time. They were wiser. They did not say, `Now we will go and have a couple of days of it. That will be a long time. We will just shut out all else and wait on the Lord for a couple of days, and if He does not come by that time, it wilt be outrageous to wait beyond it. Whoever heard of a prayer-meeting two days and two nights' long?'

They did not set the Lord a time! They went and waited till it came.

You say, "No; I have not got it." No; because you did not wait until it came. You got hungry, or you fell asleep, or hugged your idol. You did not wait TILL

IT CAME.

Suppose they had given up on the fifth day and said, `There must be some mistake. He knows we are here, all ready, and the world is perishing for our message. There must be some mistake. We had better begin.' But no, they waited on, and on, and on, until it came. Can you imagine what sort of prayers went up from the upper room? Do you think they were the lazy, lackadaisical, prayers that we hear every now and then for the Holy Spirit?

Oh! how would Peter agonize and wrestle: how would Thomas plead; how would Mary weep, beseech, and entreat, and how were they all of one heart and of one accord. They wanted the one thing, and they were there to get it. They cared for nothing else but that. They cried for it as hungry children cry for bread. They wanted it. Did the Lord ever disappoint anybody who waited like that? Can anybody say so here? Did you ever hear of such a case?

Never. HE CAME.

Oh! but there are some people, nowadays, who set God times in everything. They think a good deal more about their dinners than about Him. They think a great deal more about intercourse with their friends and doing the polite to them, than they do about the precious waiting Holy Spirit of God. They think a great deal more about their businesses. Òh!' they say, ìt is business, and business must be attended to.' But what about the Holy Ghost and the Kingdom? Must not the Kingdom of God be attended to? Must not your soul be saved, and must you not become a temple of the indwelling Spirit of God?

Put a MUST in there, if you please. Far more important is the soul than the body. Friends, are these things so, or am I only imagining them? Are these great truths, or are they fables? These are the most common-sense, simple exhibitions and illustrations of these truths that could possibly be given. Was it not so? Did they not thus wait, and did not the Holy Ghost come?--and when He came He sat upon each of them. Bless His name.

People have a wonderful habit of losing sight of the little words of the Bible-the people who make a great to-do about the Word in other ways, often say Ì

never saw that till you directed my attention to it.' Suppose I were to say that this afternoon something happened to each person, would you imagine I meant the men, and not the women? Of course you would say, I meant everyone. And it filled them all--the women as well as the men, and they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. He came.

And, my friends, He comes yet. My bodily senses have been quite cognizant of His coming sometimes. We only know that we feel something that so influences our bodies that, we cannot describe it.

In the North, when I was there, we had an all-night of prayer, at which one thousand people, admitted by ticket, waited all night on God. The meeting began at ten, and went on until six in the morning, and there were strong men, men in middle life, and old men, lying on their faces on the floor. There were doctors there, who examined them and tried to account for it from physical causes, but they could not. It was the power of God. The Holy Ghost does come, and because, in coming thus into our souls, and thus filling us, He sometimes prostrates our bodies, people rebel, as they did on this occasion, and reject the manifestation, and say, Èxcitement! fanaticism!' What right have you to say that the Holy Spirit coming into a human soul can operate upon that soul to the full extent without, to some degree, prostrating the body?

We know how people fall under great emotions of anger, grief, and joy. Why?

Because the influence of the mind has so affected the body that the body cannot bear it, and when the Holy Spirit of God comes into a human soul and opens its eyes, and quickens its perceptions, and enlarges its capacity, and swells it with glory, is it an unlikely or improbable thing that the body should sometimes be prostrated under His power? What did Paul say? "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus," and I have been into "the third heaven and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful to utter." Do you think God intended such experiences and visions only for Paul and the Apostles? Ah!

there have been many since his day who have had such experiences, and many more of God's people might have them, if they would, but they are not willing to be wrapped in His arms; they are not willing to be pressed to His bosom; they are not willing to know Him in the Scriptural sense; they are not willing to be given up and consumed by His Spirit. Their heart and flesh do not cry out after the living God, as David's did. They are not panting after Him as the hart after the water-brooks. They are not longing to come and appear before God. If they were so longing that they could not live without it, then God would come and be revealed to them. Will you, then, wait in obedient faith?

Oh! I have the most awful realization that you will be eternally better or worse for these services, and so I want you to come up higher, I don't want you to go back, and get cold and indifferent to these things, because here is the hope of the world, if there is any hope for it, in people getting filled with the Spirit, people getting so woke up to God and His glory, and the interests of His kingdom, that they should be just as anxious for souls as other people are for sovereigns. Filled with the Spirit, having eyes to see spiritual sights which others do not see, ears to hear the crying of the famishing multitudes who are dying for lack of knowledge; hearts to feel so that they could go and weep over them. Hands to break the bread of life; and, if need be, a zeal that will lead them to die for them. This is what we want, and it only comes with the fullness of the Spirit.

Are you willing, my brother? are you willing, my sister? If so, stop with us this afternoon. Never mind the dinner; never mind the tea. You have taken care of the outer man long enough, now look after the inner man. Never mind the children, mother, just now, the Lord will take care of them. Never mind anything, you who are athirst, but, getting this blessed Holy Spirit of God, this full baptism of it on your souls. The Lord help you. Amen!

9. The World's Need

MATTHEW xxi. 23.--"Son, go work today in my vineyard." LUKE xiv. 23.--"And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled."

WE might have enumerated other texts, teaching the same truths. There are plenty of them, but the general tenor and bearing of the Word of God, especially of the New Testament, is more significant than even direct and isolated texts. It seems to me that no one can disinterestedly and dispassionately study the New Testament without arriving at the conclusion that it is a fundamental principle, underlying the whole, that His light and grace is expansive; that is, God has, in no case, given His light, His truth, and His grace to any individual soul, without holding that soul responsible for communicating that light and grace to others. Real Christianity is, in its very nature and essence, aggressive. We get this principle fully exhibited and illustrated in the Parables of Jesus Christ. If you will study them, you will find that He has not given us anything to be used merely for ourselves, but that we hold and possess every talent which He has committed to us for the good of others, and for the salvation of man. If I understand it, I say this is a fundamental principle of the New Testament.

How wonderfully this principle was exhibited in the lives of the Apostles and early Christians! How utterly careless they seemed to be of everything compared with this--this was the first thing with them everywhere! How Paul, at the very threshold, counted nothing else of any consequence, but willingly, cheerfully gave up every other consideration to live for this; and how he speaks of other Apostles and helpers in the Gospel who had been nigh unto death, and laid down their necks for the work's sake; and we know how he travelled, worked, prayed, wept, and suffered, bled and died, for this one end. And so with the early Christians, who were scattered through the persecutions, how they went everywhere preaching the Word; how earnest and zealous they were, even after the Apostolic age, we learn from ecclesiastical history--how they would push themselves in everywhere; how they made converts, and won real, self-denying, followers even in king's courts; how they would not be kept out, and could not be put down, and could not be hindered or silenced. "These Christians are everywhere," said one of their bitterest persecutors. Yes, they were instant in season and out of season; they won men and women on every hand, to the vexation and annoyance of those who hated them. Like their Master, they could not be hid; they could not be repressed; so aggressive, so constraining, was the spirit which inspired and urged them on.

It becomes a greater puzzle every day to me, coming in contact with individual souls, how people read their Bibles! They do not seem to understand what they read. Well might a Philip or an angel come to them and say,

"Understandest thou what thou readest?" Oh! friends, study your New Testament on this question, and you will be alarmed to find to what an awful extent you are your brother's keeper--to what an awful and alarming extent God holds you responsible for the salvation of those around you.

I want to glance, FIRST, at our call to work for God; and, SECONDLY, at two or three indispensable qualifications for successful labour.

And, first, as I have just said, we are called by the Word not only in these direct passages, but by the underlying principle running through it all, and laying upon us the obligation to save men. In fact, the world is cast upon us: we are the only people who CAN save the unconverted.

Oh! I wish I could get this thought thoroughly into your minds. It has been, perhaps, one of the most potent, with respect to any little service I have rendered in the vineyard, the thought, that Jesus Christ has nobody else to represent Him here but us Christians--His real people: nobody else to work for Him. These poor people of the world, who are in darkness and ignorance, have nobody else to show them the way of mercy. If we do not go to them with loving earnestness and determination to rescue them from the grasp of the great enemy; if we do not, by the power of the Holy Ghost, bind the strong man and take his goods, who is to do it? God has devolved it upon us. I say this is an alarming and awful consideration.

Secondly, we are called by the Spirit. The very first aspiration, as I said the other night, of a newly-born soul is after some other soul. The very first utterance, after the first burst of praise to God for deliverance from the bondage of sin and death, is a prayer gasped to the throne for some other soul still in darkness. And is not this the legitimate fruit of the Spirit? Is not this what we should expect? I take any one here, who has been truly saved, to record if the first gushings of his soul, after his own deliverance, was not for somebody else--father, mother, child, brother, sister, friend? Oh! yes, some of you could not go to sleep until you had written to a distant relative, and poured out your soul in anxious longings for his salvation; you could not take your necessary food until you had spoken or written to somebody in whose soul you were deeply interested. The Spirit began at once to urge you to seek for souls; and so it is frequently the last cry of the Spirit in the believer's soul before it leaves the body. You have sat beside many a dying saint, and what has been the last prayer? Has it been anything about self, money, family, circumstances? Oh! those things are now all left behind, and the last expressed anxiety has been for some prodigal soul outside the kingdom of God. When the light of eternity comes streaming upon the soul, and its eyes get wide open to the value of souls. It neither hears nor sees anything else! It goes out of time into eternity, praying as the Redeemer did, for the souls it is leaving behind. This is the first and last utterance of the Spirit in the believer's soul on earth; and oh! if Christians were only true to the promptings of this blessed Spirit, it would be the prevailing impulse, the first desire and effort all the way through life. It is not God's fault that it is not so. In personal dealing with souls there is no point comes out more frequently than this: nothing which those who have really been converted and have become backsliders in heart more frequently confess and bemoan than their unfaithfulness to the monitions of the Spirit with respect to other souls. In fact, backsliding begins here in thousands of instances. Satan gets people to yield to considerations of ease, propriety, being out of season, being injudicious, and so on; and they lose opportunities of dealing with souls, and so the Spirit is grieved and grieved. Oh! what numbers of people have confessed this to me.

A gentleman, in advanced life, said: `When I was a young man, and in my first love, the zeal of the Lord's house so consumed me that I used to neglect my daily business, and could scarcely sleep at night; but, alas, that was many years ago.' `Was it not better with you then than now?' I asked; and the tears came welling up into his eyes. Oh, yes! the Lord says of him, "I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown; Israel was holiness unto the Lord, and the first-fruits of His increase." And, Alas! There are many such today. They have it all to do over again; they have to repent and do their first-works; they have to come back and get forgiven, and washed, and saved, if they are to go into the kingdom on high, all for want of systematically and resolutely obeying the urgings of the Holy Spirit towards their fellow-men.

Now, you have, some of you, been hearing, the last few Sundays, about grieving the Spirit, and about being filled with the Spirit; and some of you are puzzled as to how you ought to wait--whether you ought to go on with your lawful avocations and wait. I say: My friends, I could quite justify the position I took up last Sunday, but I will not stop, for I do not care about circumstantials; but mind, this is the great point--you must so wait, wherever it may be--so plead, and wrestle, and believe--SO THAT YOU GET IT. Then I care not whether it be in Jerusalem, in the Upper Room, or anywhere else--only, get it. Don't let us lose the substance in quibbling about the way. Wait in that way congenial to your present circumstances; but, oh! wait for it until you get it, for this is the life of your souls, and the life of many souls, perchance, besides yours. You want this spirit--the spirit that yearns over the souls of your fellowmen; to weep over them as you look at them in their sin, and folly and misery; the spirit that cannot be satisfied with your own enjoyments or with feeling that you are safe, or even that your children are safe; but that yearns over every living soul while there is one left unsaved, and can never rest satisfied until it is brought into the kingdom.

Such are the urgings of the Spirit; and if people would only be obedient to them, they would never lose these urgings. Why, what an anomaly it is! Does it look reasonable, or like God's dealings, that people should begin so strong, like the old man felt when he was young, and, instead of waxing stronger, and having this holy zeal and desire increased, get weaker and weaker, and less and less? Does it look like God's way of doing things? Oh, no! This eclipse is through grieving and quenching the Spirit.

Now, my friend, you are called by the Spirit to this work. Obey the call--DO IT. Never mind if it chokes you--do it. Say, "I had better die in obedience than live in disobedience." Oh! these everlasting likes and dislikes. Ì don't like to speak to that person,' Ì so dislike writing that letter.' Oh! you don't know what might be the consequences. Never mind the consequences--do it. God will stand between you and consequences; and, if He lets you suffer, never mind--then suffer; but obey the voice of the Spirit. There would have been thousands of souls saved if all those who have had these urgings had obeyed them. Pray, where do these urgings come from? Do they come from your own evil hearts?

Then you are better than the Apostle. Separated from the Spirit that dwells in you, and disunited from Christ, your living Head, you are selfish, devilish. Then where do these urgings come from? Do they come from the Devil?

Satan, then would indeed be divided against himself. Where do they come from? It is the Spirit of the living God that is urging you to come out and seek to save the lost. Will you obey these urgings? Will you give up your reasonings? Will you give up your likes and dislikes, and OBEY? If you will, then He will come to you more and more, till, like David, you will feel the interests of His kingdom to be more to you than meat or drink, than silver or gold. Nay, you will become like him who said, "The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up."

But, further, we are called to this work by what He has done for us. And what is that? Oh! you say, I cannot tell. No, no; we shall have to get home first, and then we shall never be able to tell. We shall never be able to cast up that sum, not even for the gratification of the angels. That will remain an unexplored quantity for ever, what He has done for us!! We shall have to find out what it would have been to have been lost! and what it is to be saved in all its fullness and eternity, before we can tell what He has done for us!!

What has He done for us? Oh! if we had a tithe of the love to sinners that He had for us, of His forbearing patience, of His persevering effort, when He followed us day and night, reasoned and reasoned with us, wooed and allured us, what could we not do?

I remember reading, somewhere, the story of a nobleman who was (I think) a backslider. He was stopping at some country inn, and he went up into a room in which, over the mantelpiece there was a very good picture of the crucifixion by a good old master, and under it was written, "I suffered this for thee--what hast thou done for Me?" This question went home. It struck deep. He thought--Yes, what indeed? He went out into the stables to his horses, to try to get rid of the uncomfortable impression, but he could not forget it. A soft, pathetic voice seemed to follow him,' Ì suffered this for thee, what hast thou done for Me!' At last it broke him down, and he went to his knees. He said: `True, Lord, I have never done anything for Thee, but now I give myself and my all to Thee, to be used up in Thy service.'

And have you never heard that voice in your soul, as you have been kneeling at the Cross? Did you ever gaze upon that illustrious sufferer, and hear His voice, as you looked back into the paltry past? What hast thou done for Me?

Now, there have been, at the least, something like 350 people, who have come forward, so far, in these services, professing to give themselves afresh and fully to Jesus. I am sure, in the main, they have been sincere. They have come for the witness of the Spirit to their adoption, and for power for service. Now, friends, I want to know what this is to come to--what is to be the end of it?

"What are you going to do, brother?

What are you going to do?"

And sister, too. Is it going to die out in sentiment? Is it going to evaporate in sighs and wishings, and end in Ì CANNOT?' God forbid! What are you GOING TO DO? What HAVE you been doing for Him the last week? Ask yourselves. You say, `Well, I have read my Bible more.' Very good, so far as it goes. What have you read it for? `Well,' you say, `to get to know the Lord's will, and to get instruction and comfort.' Aye, exactly, but that is all for yourself, you see. Ì have prayed a great deal.' Very good. I wish everybody would pray. The Apostles say all men everywhere ought to pray. What for? Ì have been asking the Lord for great things.' Very good, praise the Lord; but those are for yourself, mainly. If you have been led out in agonizing supplication for souls, thank God for it, and go on, as the Apostle says, "watching thereunto, with all perseverance," "praying in the Holy Ghost;" but if it has been merely praying to get all you can for yourself, what profit is that to the Lord? But you say, Ì am bringing up my family.' Exactly; so are the worldly people around you, but what for? For God or for yourself? Oh! let us look at these things, friends. I am afraid a great deal of the religion is a mere transition of the selfishness of the human heart from the world to religion. I am afraid a great deal of the religion of this day ends in getting all you can and doing as little as you can--like some of your servants. You know the sort, who will do no more than they are forced--just get through, because they are hired. There is a great deal of that kind of service in these days, both towards man and towards God.

Now, friends, what have you been doing for Him--for the promotion of His blessed, glorious, saving purposes in the world? What have you been denying yourself for the sake of His kingdom? What labour have you gone through of mind, or brain, or heart? How many letters have you written? How many people have you spoken to? How many visits have you made? What selfdenying labour have you been doing for Him who has done (as you say) so much for you? What have you been suffering for Him? Have you been trying, in some little measure, to fill up behind the measure of His sufferings "for His body's sake, the church?" Have you been carrying the sins and sorrows of a guilty world on your heart before God, and pleading with Him for His own name's sake, to pour out His Spirit upon the ungodly multitudes outside, and to quicken half-asleep professors inside? Have you been subjecting yourself to reproach and contempt--not only from the world, but from half-hearted professors and Pharisees, bearing the Cross, enduring the shame of unkind reproaches in living and striving to save them? Oh, what have you been doing, brother and sister?

Come, now, friends, I want a practical result. He suffered that for you. He is up yonder, interceding for you. Five bleeding wounds He always bears in the presence of His Father for you. If He were to forget you for a single moment, or cease His intercession, what would happen? What are you doing for Him?

He has left you an example that you should follow His steps. What were they?

They were blood-tracked; they were humiliated steps. They were steps scorned by the world. He was ignored, and traduced, and rejected of men. He had not where to lay His head. He carried in His body and in His soul the sorrows and sufferings of all our race. He was a man of sorrows--not His own. He had no reason to be sorrowful. He was the Father's own beloved, and He knew it, but He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. The griefs of this poor, lost, half-damned world He bore, and they were sometimes so intolerable that they squeezed the blood out of His veins. Have you been following in His footsteps, in any measure? He lived not for Himself. He came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and took upon Him the form of a servant. What are you doing? Oh! my friends, up, up, and be doing. Begin, if you have not begun--begin today. Ask Him to baptize you with His Spirit, and let you begin at once to follow Him in the regeneration of the Spirit. You are called by what He did for you!

Then, you are called by the wants of the world. I have said so much about this at other times that I will not say more now, only methinks it is a theme that is never exhausted, and never will be while there are any more sinners to save. Oh! the wants of the world! To me it is an overwhelming, a prodigious thought, that He shed His blood for every soul of man, and that, as He hung there, He saw, under all the vileness, and sin, and ruin of the Fall the human soul created originally in His own image, and capable of infinite and eternal development and progress. The soul to be rescued, washed, redeemed, saved, sanctified, and glorified--He saw this glorious jewel, and He gave HIMSELF for it. Look at these souls. There is not one of them so mean, or vile, or base, but can be rescued by the power of His Spirit, and by His living, glorious Gospel brought to bear upon them. The Saviour, quoting from the Prophets, says, "Ye are gods (and adds) the Scriptures cannot be broken." He had no such little, mean, insignificant estimate of the worth of human souls, as some people have nowadays, who consign whole generations to hell without any bowels of mercy or compassion. Oh! the Lord fill us with the pity of Jesus Christ, who, when He saw the multitudes, wept over them. Oh!

friends, think of one such soul! What is your gold, or houses, or lands--what your respectability, what your reputation, what all the prizes of this world? We talk about it, but who realizes it--who, WHO?--the value of one precious, immortal soul saved, redeemed, sanctified? Oh, the wants of the world! They are dying, THEY ARE DYING!! When people come to me with their fastidious objections, I say, "My friend, all I know is--souls are dying, dying."

If your homes were being decimated by the cholera, you would not be very particular about the means you used to stay it, and if anybody came with objections to the roughness of your measures, you would say, `the people are dying, they are dying,' and that would be the end of all argument. I say, they are dying, and they ARE to be saved. Satan is getting them: I want God to have them. Jesus Christ has bought them. He was the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. They belong to Him, and He shall have everyone I can reach, and everyone I can inspire others to reach also.

The world is dying. Do you believe it? You are called by the wants of the world. Begin nearest home if you like, by all means, I have little faith in those people's ministrations who go abroad after others, while their own are perishing at their firesides. Begin at home, but do not end there. "Oh! yes," people say, "begin at home," but they end there; you never hear of them anywhere else, and it comes to very little what they do at home, after all. God has ordained that the two shall go together. Get them saved by all means, but get somebody else saved as well. Set yourself to work for God. Go to Him to ask Him how to do it. Go to Him for the equipment of power and then begin. Never mind how you tremble. I dare say your trembling will do more good than if you were ever so brave. Never mind the tears. I wish Christians would weep the Gospel into people; it would often go deeper than it does. Never mind if you do stammer. They will believe you when it comes from the heart. They will say, `He talked to me quite natural,' as a man said, some time ago-wondering that he should be talked to about religion in a natural way; but mind, no mock feeling, for they will detect it in a minute. Go to the closet until you get filled with the Spirit, and then go and let it out upon them.

Finney says, "I went and let my heart out on the people." Get your heart full of the living water and then open the gates and let it flow out. Look them in the face and take hold of them lovingly by the hand and say, `My friend, you are dying, you are going to everlasting death. If nobody has ever told you till now-I have come to tell you. My friend, you have a precious soul. Is it saved?' They can understand that! not beginning in a roundabout way, but talking to them straight: `Do you ever think about your precious soul? Is it saved? Are your sins pardoned? Are you ready to die?' Your rich neighbours and your servantgirls and your stable-men alike, can understand that.

A lady said to my daughter, Ì have begun talking to people about their souls in quite a different way to what I used. I begin asking them if they do not know they are sinners and if ready to die, and it produces quite a different effect.'

For one reason she has her own heart full of the Love and Spirit of God, and that burns her words in. Begin in that way and see what God will do through you, for, of course, I only recognize you as the instrumentality which He has chosen, and those who reflect upon the instrumentality reflect upon His wisdom. You go and put your hand to the plough and He will give you strength to push it along.

The Lord help you to go home thinking about the wants of the world, and next Sabbath we will consider the qualifications for labour.

10. The Holy Ghost

LUKE xxiv. 49.--"And, behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high." ACTS i. 8.--"But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you."

FRIENDS who were present at former services will remember our line of thought, without my stopping to recapitulate. My chief reason for taking up this subject again, after having preached four sermons on it, is to meet the difficulties of some whom I believe to be anxious and honest inquirers. Taking those who have written and spoken to me as representatives of a class, it occurred to me that there might be many others in a similar state of mind, and it is a great joy to me if the Lord uses me to meet real difficulties, and to help those who are exercised by them into a higher state of grace, and a more thorough and complete devotion to the Lord. This is my end--God is my witness--in every service.

Now, I do not want to make any reflections, and will not do so any further than I can help; but in dealing with such a subject we cannot avoid this, to a certain extent, as I have said before; if the truth reveals error, and if trying to get into a better track necessarily in some measure reflects on the old track--we cannot help it, and we must not eschew the former for the latter. It must be manifest, I think, to every spiritual and thoughtful Christian that there is a great want somewhere in connection with the preaching of the Gospel, and the instrumentalities of the church at large. That there are many blessed exceptions I joyfully and gladly admit. No one hails them with greater gladness than I do. That there are blessed green spots here and there in the wilderness is quite true, and when these are gathered together and descanted on in articles, they look very nice, and we are apt to take the flattering unction to our souls that things are not so bad after all; but, when we come to travel the country over and find how few and far between these green spots are, and hear what a tide of lamentation and mourning reaches us all round the land as to the deadness, coldness, and dearth of Christian churches, we cannot help feeling that there is a GREAT WANT SOMEWHERE! This is not only my opinion, but it is almost universally admitted, that, with the enormous expenditure of means, the great amount of human effort, the multiplication of instrumentalities during the past century, there has not been a corresponding result.

People say to me, on every hand, we have meetings without number, services, societies, conventions, conferences, but what comes of them all, comparatively? And I may just say here that numbers of ministers and clergymen, in private conversation, admit the same thing. In fact, none are more ready to admit this comparative lack of results than many dear spiritual ministers. They say, when talking with us behind the scenes, `Yes, it is a sad fact. I think I preach the truth. I pray about it. I am anxious for results, but alas!

alas!

The conversions are but few and far between.' And then, not only are those conversions few, but in the mass of instances superficial--we should expect from such a putting of the truth as that we have been reading about, numerous and continual turnings to the Lord as in those days--we should expect men coming out openly from sin and from God-dishonouring courses, businesses, and professions, coming out from fashionable and worldly circles, abjuring the world, and literally and absolutely following the Christ as in those days. That is what we have a right to expect, and yet how comparatively rare they are, so that when people do this, there is quite a commotion, and it is talked about all over the land. Now I say this is universally admitted, and it behooves us to ask before God and with an earnest heart-yearning, desiring to improve this state of things. Where is the lack, what is the want?

Now note, secondly, this want is not the truth. Oh! what a great deal of talk we have about the truth, and not any too much. I would not yield to any man or woman in this audience in my love for this Bible. I love this Word and regard it as the standard of all faith and practice, and our guide to live by; but it is not enough of itself. The great want is not the truth, for you see facts would contradict this theory. If it were the truth, then there would be no lack at this day, compared with other times, because we never had so much of the truth. There never was so much preaching of the truth, or such a wide dissemination of the Word of God, yet, comparatively, where are the results?

Further, not only as to quantity, but as to quality am I discouraged. Not only are there comparatively few conversions, but a great many of these are of a questionable kind. We should not only ask--are people converted, but what are they converted to? What SORT OF SAINTS ARE THEY?

Because, I contend, you had far better let a man alone in sin than give him a sham conversion, and make him believe he is a Christian when he is nothing of the kind. So you see we must look after the quality as well as the quantity, and I fear, we have an awful amount of spurious production, and it behooves us--and I will, for one, if I were to be crucified for it tomorrow--be true to what the Spirit of God has taught me on this point, I will never pander to things as they are for fear of the persecution which follows trying to put them right. God forbid!

Then, I say, the lack is not truth. There will be thousands of sermons preached today--the truth, and nothing but the truth. Nobody will pretend to say they were not in perfect keeping with the Word of God; and yet they will be perfect failures, and nobody will know it better than they who preach them!

These are facts.

I was talking, on this point, a while ago, with a good man, who said, Àh! yes, I have not seen a conversion in my church for these two years.' Now, what was the reason? There was a reason, and I am afraid many might say the same. Yet there are the unconverted. They come to be operated upon. Take a church where there is a congregation of, say 800 or 1,000, suppose with a membership of 200 or 300. What becomes of the 500 or 700 unbelievers, who come and go, Sunday after Sunday, like a door on its hinges, neither the better nor worse? Nay, God grant it might be so, but they are worse. They get enough light to light them down to damnation, but they do not get enough power to lift them into salvation. What IS THE MATTER? There must be something wrong. Will you account for it. It ought to be accounted for! It ought not so to be. God is not changed. Surely He is as anxious for the salvation of men now as He ever was. Human hearts are not changed; they are neither better nor worse; they are depraved, vile, devilish just the same. The Gospel is exactly the same power it ever was, rightly experienced, lived, and preached. It is still the power of God unto salvation. Then what is the matter?

The truth is preached. The people hear it, and yet they remain as they were. Where is the lack?

Now, I say, and I most unhesitatingly assert, that the great want is POWER-this power of which we have been reading.

And I want to remark, thirdly, that this power is as distinct, and definite, and separate, a gift of God, as was this Book, as was the Son or any other gift which He has given us.

It is distinctly recognized, not only in our texts, but, as we read to you again and again, as a distinct and definite gift accompanying the efforts of those who live on the conditions on which God can give it to them. We cannot explain this gift, but it is the power of the Holy Spirit of God in the soul of the speaker accompanying His word, making it cut and pierce to the dividing asunder soul and spirit. "You shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you." "Until you be endued with," not the truth, not faith (they had faith before that), but, "power;" and, as He says in another place, "I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist." Though they may stone you, as they did Stephen, they shall be cut to the heart, and made to feel the power of your testimony.

Now, I find people who go to work, which is all right, because the power comes to us in obedient faith; but they go trusting in their own efforts. They are without this endowment of power, and they see no result. The work is a comparative failure. Oh! what numbers of people have come to me who have been at work in different directions, in churches, as ministers, elders, deacons, leaders, Sabbath-school teachers, tract distributors, and the like, confessing that they had been working for more or less lengthened periods, and had seen comparatively little result. They say, `Do you think this is right?

Do you think I ought to go on?' Go on, assuredly, but not in the same track. Go on, most decidedly, but seek a fresh inspiration. There is something wrong, or you would have seen some fruit of your labour--not all the fruit. God does not give to any of us to see it all; but we do see enough to assure us that the Holy Ghost is accompanying our testimony. God's people have always done that when they have worked in conformity with the conditions on which the power can be given.

Now, this is how I account for the want of results--the want of the direct, pungent, enlightening, convicting, restoring, transforming power of the Holy Ghost; and I care not how gigantic the intellect of the agent, or how equipped from the school of human learning. I would rather have a Hallelujah Lass, a little child, with the power of the Holy Ghost, hardly able to put two sentences of the Queen's English together, to come to help, bless, and benefit my soul, than I would have the most learned divine in the kingdom without it, for it is

"not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit," Oh! that you would learn it. When you have learnt that, you will be made: when you experience it, you will lay hold on God. It is not by might, any kind of might, might of intellect, or learning, or eloquence, or position, or influence; it is not by might, nor by power--man's power--of any sort, but by My Spirit. That is as true as it ever was, HERE IS THE SECRET OF THE CHURCH'S FAILURE! She is like Israel of old. She hath multiplied her defensed cities and her palaces, but she hath forgotten the God of Israel, in whom her strength is. If you will read the history of the church from the beginning you will find that true which I say, that just to the degree that the church has increased in the material she has decreased in the spiritual. I do not say it ought to be so; I do not say that is a necessity. I only give you a significant fact that it has been so.

You say, `How do you account for it?' I account for it because we poor, wretched, tiny, helpless creatures, although we cannot get anything good in the creature, yet put some TRUST in it. But when God teaches us that we have nothing to trust in, when He makes us realize our own nothingness and utter helplessness, and gives as hold of Him with the grasp of despair, then we will begin to be of some use--and never till then. It is God worketh in us and by us. The Apostle labours all the way through to show and convince everybody that it was God in him and not of himself at all. Though he could have preached with enticing words of man's wisdom, and, no doubt, had many a temptation to do it, as everybody has who has dipped into the flowery paths of human rhetoric and learning, yet he eschewed this as he would the Devil. He said, no! "this one thing I do" putting aside absolutely all else, he went on straight to that work, till they cut his head off.

I believe you do perceive; but, if you do not, take the Book and examine it yourself. Be at the trouble. You will not get at the mind of the Lord without a great deal of trouble on these matters of power, spiritual union, and the like. Take the Bible with you on your knees before the Lord; show Him the words, and say, `Now, Lord, show me the meaning of this.' Wait, and there will come a voice from the excellent glory. There will come light as from the Shekinah, which will reveal it in your spiritual consciousness, and you will thus know that thing for ever. You will be wiser than your teachers with respect to that particular point.

Further, you say, `Can we have this power equally with the early disciples?' I say, reasoning by analogy, assuming that what God has done in the past He will continue to do in the future, is it not likely that He will give it to us, because we equally need it? We poor things, in our day, as they did in theirs, we equally need it: first, because the character of the agents is the same. We are very much like them, and they were very much like us. Thank God. It has often encouraged me. If they had been men of gigantic intellects and extraordinary education, training, and position; if they had possessed all human equipment and qualifications, we might have looked back through the ages in despair, and said, Ì can never be such as they were.' Look what they were, naturally, apart from this gift of power. The Holy Ghost has taken care to give us their true characters. They were men of like passions, weaknesses, tendencies, liability to fall, with ourselves--just such poor, frail, weak, easilytripped-up creatures, and, in many instances, unbelieving and disobedient, before Pentecost. Now, I say this is encouraging for us all.

You remember what Jesus said to Mary, "Go and tell my disciples AND

PETER." Mary, perhaps, would have left Peter out after his shameful denial of the Lord; for fear of this, Jesus said, "Go and tell my disciples AND PETER."

Ah! there are some here saying, `But Peter was not so bad as I am.' Well, we don't know anything about that, but, whether you are worse or not, the Holy Ghost is equal to the emergency. He can cure you. He can baptize you with His power. You may have denied Him, if not as Peter did, yet practically as badly. It makes no difference to God whether you have been a little bad or very bad; whether you have denied Him once or thrice, or whether you have denied Him with oaths and curses. If you will only come and comply with the conditions, He will look on you, heal you, and baptize you with power. Did they not all forsake Him and flee, except a few poor faithful women? All the world forsook Him and fled in the hour of His extremity. Àh!' you say, `well, I have done the same myself. I would not watch with Him one hour. I have betrayed Him before my friends and acquaintances in the world, where I have been brought into circumstances that have tested my fidelity. My courage has failed, and I have failed to witness for Him.' Yes, I know and agree with you that it was base ingratitude. You were a traitor, indeed, but still, if you will come back, `Peter,' and repent, and do your first works, He will receive you-baptize you with power. Oh! what they were before Pentecost, and what they were after! Poor Peter, who could not stand the questionings of a servant maid, who could not dare to have it said that he was one of the despised Nazarenes, what a valiant soldier he afterwards became for the Lord Jesus Christ, and how tradition says he was crucified for his Master at the last. Anyway, we know he was a faithful and valiant soldier to the end of his journey.

Now, this baptism will transform you as it did them; it will make you all prophets and prophetesses, according to your measure.

Will you come and let Him baptize you? Will you learn, once and for ever, that it is not a question of human merit, strength or deserving at all, but simply a question of submission, obedience, faith.

Then we need it because not only are the agents the same, but our work is essentially the same.

It may differ in its outward manifestations because we live in an age of greater toleration, but it is just the same in essence, and I do not know, as to the manifestation, when you come to do it in Apostolic fashion, with the Apostolic spirit, whether you do not get very much the same Apostolic treatment. They gnash upon you with their teeth, and do as much as the law will let them, and sometimes a little more, in the way of stoning and persecuting you.

The great thing to be done by this power of God is to subdue the naturally evil, wicked, and rebellious heart of man. Now God alone is able to do that. That is a superhuman work. You may enlighten a man's intellect, civilize his manners, reform his habits, make him a respectable, honest, industrious member of society, without the power of God, but you cannot transform HIS

SOUL. That is too much for any human reformer. That is the prerogative of the Holy Ghost, and I have not a shadow of a doubt that the eternal day will reveal every other kind of work to be wood, hay, stubble. All the sham conversions, all the people whose lives and opinions have been changed by anything short of this power will be wood, hay, stubble. It is the prerogative of the Spirit of God. Therefore, God never pretends to do it by any other means; and all the way through the Bible this power is ascribed to the Spirit of God. Therefore, we want this Spirit to do this work. What! you set yourself to enlighten a darkened human soul, to convince a hardened, rebellious sinner, to convert a rebel in arms against God, with an inveterate hatred in the very core of his soul against God and all about God. You set yourself to bring down that--to transform that evil, wicked heart, to subdue that soul to submission and obedience! You try it, try it without the Spirit of God. Oh! no, you want that Spirit. You want the same measure of that Spirit, just the same, which Paul had.

And what is our work? To go and subjugate the world to Jesus; everybody we can reach, everybody we can influence, and bring them to the feet of Jesus, and make them realize that He is their lawful King and lawgiver; that the Devil is a usurper, and that they are to come and serve Christ all the days of their lives. Dare any of us think of it without this equipment of power? Talk about

`Can we have it?' we are of no use without it. What can we do without it? This is the reason of the effeteness of so much professed Christianity; there is no Holy Ghost in it. It is all rotten. It is like a very pretty corpse--you cannot say there is this wanting or the other wanting; it is a perfect form, but dead. It is like a good galvanic battery. It is all right--perfect in all its parts--but when you touch it there is no effect--there is no fire or shock. What is the matter? It only wants the fire--the power.

Oh! friends, we want the power that we may be able to go and stretch ourselves upon the dead in trespasses and sins, and breathe into him the breath of spiritual life. We want to be able to go and touch his eyes that he may see, and speak to the dead and deaf with the voice of God and make them hear. This is what we want--POWER.

If we equally need it, is it likely that God will withhold it? Why, the Book, rightly read and understood, is full of promise and exhortation to get it. Is it likely that if we are as frail as they were, if the work is the same, is it likely that the God of all grace, and our Father as much as theirs, and as much in sympathy with the souls of men, will withhold it from us No, No. But our Saviour distinctly told us that He bought it for us--that it was more expedient that His people should have it than that He should remain with them. It is promised to all believers to the end of time. The conditions you know--simply putting away everything that hinders, casting aside every doubtful thing, trampling it in the dust; then a full, whole-hearted surrender to Him, embracing the Cross, embracing His will at all costs and sacrifices, and then a determined march to the upper room at Jerusalem and a determined abiding there until you get it--these are the conditions. Anybody can have it on these terms.

Then, in conclusion, let me remind you--and it makes my own soul almost reel when I think of it that God holds us responsible. He holds you responsible for all the good you might do if you had it. Do not deceive yourself. He will have the five talents with their increase. He will not have an excuse for one, and you will not dare to go up to the throne, and say, `Thou wast a hard Master, reaping where Thou hast not sown, and gathering where Thou hadst not strewn. Thou badest me to save souls when Thou knewest I had not the power.' What will He say to you? `Wicked and slothful servant, out of thine own mouth will I judge thee. You knew where you could have got the power. You knew the conditions. You might have had it. Where are the souls you might have saved? Where are the children that I would have given you?

Where is the fruit?'

Oh! friends, these are solemn and awful realities. If I did not believe them I should not stand here. Oh, what you might do! Who can tell? Who would ever have thought, twenty years ago, when I first raised my voice, a feeble, trembling woman, one of the most timid and bashful the Lord ever saved, the hundreds of precious souls that would be given me? I only refer to myself because I know my own case better than that of another; but, let me ask you-supposing I had held back and been disobedient to the Heavenly vision, what would God have said to me for the loss of all this fruit? Thank God, much of it is already gathered into heaven, people who have sent me word from their dying beds, that they blessed God they had ever heard my voice, saying that they should wait for me on the other side, prepared to lead me to the throne. What would have become of the fruit? I should not have had it, anyway. They would never have become my crown of rejoicing in the day of the Lord. Oh, who can tell what God can do by any man or woman, however timid, however faint, if only fully given up to Him. My brother, He holds you responsible. He holds you responsible, my sister--you, who wrote me about your difficulties and temptations in testifying of Jesus--He holds you responsible. What are you going to do? Ask yourself. It is coming. You believe it. You say you do. Unless you are a confirmed hypocrite, you do believe that you are going to stand before the throne of His glory. You believe you are going to stand before Him by and bye, when you shall receive according to the things you have done in your body. What shall you say? The world is dying--souls are being damned at an awful rate every day. Men are running to destruction. Torrents of iniquity are rolling down our streets and through our world. God is almost tired of the cry of our sins and iniquities going up into His cars. What are you going to do, brother? What are you going to do? Will you set to work?

Will you get this power? Will you put away everything that hinders? Will you have it at all costs?

We had a letter only on Friday, about a gentleman who had been reconverted in the services of The Salvation Army, telling us that he has relinquished an income of £800 a year, in order to keep a conscience void of offence--this is the result of the power of the Holy Ghost. I heard of another gentleman who was invited to a party. After dinner, the card-table was got out, as usual, and when the cards were all spread and everybody was ready to begin, this gentleman jumped up, and pushed it away, and said, Ì have done with this for ever.' The lady who told me said, `He was down on his knees before we had time to turn round, and was praying for us and for all the house. Òh!' she added, `you should have seen them.' Yes, of course, every man felt like the people round the Saviour. Every man's own conscience condemned him.

`They went off home, without any more cardplaying, or dancing, or winedrinking that night.' Come out from amongst the ungodly. Testify against them. Reprove them. Entreat them with tears. But be determined to deliver your soul of their blood. God will give you the power, and He holds you responsible for doing this--you people who have been coming here, who have received the light. WILL YOU DO IT? If you will, we shall meet again, and rejoice with joy unspeakable. If you do, we shall praise God for ever that He brought us inside the walls of this building, long after it has mouldered into dust. There shall be children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren from you spiritually, if you will only be faithful.

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