From Helps in Things Concerning Himself: Volume 5 (1895)

I desire simply to bring before you the scripture unfoldings as to the Person of God the Holy Ghost. The subject is of all importance, not only because our God and Father has been pleased to reveal it to us in scripture, but also because the presence in person of the Comforter on earth constitutes the essential difference of the present Christian state; it is true it is not the foundation of it, but the power and presence of the Holy Ghost on earth, as the result of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and His exaltation to the right hand of God, is the distinguishing characteristic of Christianity.

I would at this time confine myself to the great fact of the Personality of the Spirit as we have it revealed to us in scripture.

It is very comforting to the heart to know that while on the whole page, as it were, of scripture, His divine Person is unfolded more or less, He is brought before us more vividly in His Personality, as soon as the blessed Lord announces to His disciples His approaching departure out of this world to the Father.

What tenderness of the heart of Christ comes before us in this! He knew what a wrench His departure would be to their poor sorrow-filled hearts, He knew what a blank His absence would create. He was about to leave them in Person, another Comforter, the blessed Paraclete (B"D"680J@H), or, as some have called Him, Advocatus, that is, one “called in,” was to be here in Person. Oh how tender of the Lord all this, as He was about to leave them in Person a Person then was to come and abide with them for ever.

This is the more striking as we remember that in the early chapters of John, the blessed Spirit is presented to us rather as Power than in Personality. We know, thank God, He is both.

But further, in order that we may have the fact of His divine Personality more impressed upon us, I would observe how that throughout those precious chapters of John 14, 15, 16, the language in which the blessed Spirit revealed the mind of God, and inspired as well the writers to convey it, leaves no doubt whatever as to the Personality of the Comforter, for we have the masculine, such as ,6,4<@H, that is, that Person; "LJ@H, that is, He Himself used, when speaking of the Spirit: it is then Him, as has been very truly said, “As the living and conscious exerciser of true personal will and love, as truly and fully as the first ‘Paraclete,’ the Lord Jesus Christ Him- self (1 John 2:1).

Now it is very blessed to observe that this new personal power, this divine Person, God the Holy Ghost, is spoken of as “Power from on high” (see Luke 24:49, and compare with it Eph. 4:8 and Psa. 68:18); this heavenly endowment they were to receive consequent upon the ascension and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And, moreover, note they were to be clothed with it, for that is the force of the word in the original (,<‘LF0F2,), they were to have put upon them the garment of heavenly power, heavenly endowment! How precious to dwell on this, and what light it sheds on His own gracious words, “It is expedient for you that I go away.” Further, note that in the sense of power we are unclothed until we receive the heavenly gift—God the Holy Ghost—and He alone is power. May we rejoice evermore in this heavenly Comforter and power.

But again let me remark, that this new power was also to be the fulfilment of the promise of the Father in three ways, namely:

1st. In vivid contrast with law and Jewish blessing.

2nd. As setting forth the new order of power connected with the characteristic name of Christianity, namely, Father.

3rd. As having been given to Christ and received by Him from the Father for others; it was but suitable that He the second Man in His place of exaltation, having revealed the Father, should receive Him, the Spirit, for others, and as soon as the Spirit had been given, and sent down from Him in glory, this explanation is thus given, “Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he (Jesus) hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear (Acts 2:33).

Let us then dwell much on the blessed fact of there being in us and with us a blessed divine Person, God the Holy Ghost, He and He alone could be the solace for the wrench and the filler of the blank caused by the departure and absence of our Lord Jesus Christ; He and He alone could supply the comfort for their sorrow, sustaining their faith in the One now to be unseen, and as well testifying of the loved absent One to their hearts. May we know this gracious ministry of this personal Comforter more and more.

“Thou Remainest . . . Thou Art the Same”

Another period of time is begun, and the things of the former year are passed away with it, men and things have faded from view, many of them to be forgotten, remembered no more. We enter upon an unknown future to-day, full of hopes to some, fears to others, uncertainty to all. When I say uncertainty, I mean only in respect of time and things on earth; thank God, all that is of real value is for the Christian “sure and certain . . . within the veil.”

In the passage which supplies us with the two blessed presentations of Christ which head this page, we find the Spirit through the apostle contemplating the perishing, and the waxing old, and the changing, and the folding up of the whole of this material earth; but humbled as He might be, who became man, yet He was the Creator Himself, and His years could not fail.

Further, let us note the importance of the word rendered “Lord” in the quotation from Psalm 102:25-27—it is the supreme and incommunicable name; it is Jehovah here, but is translated “Lord” in the Septuagint. It has often been remarked that the name God may be used in a subordinate sense and applied to those who represent the authority of God, but the name of Jehovah is never thus used, it is His own blest name of covenant relationship, Himself the everlasting and immutable One.

Let us just for our comfort meditate on the precious contrast presented to us here, namely, the crumbling and perishable creation with the eternal Christ—Jehovah.

First, how blessed to know that He abides, He remains the same, when all else shall have both changed and passed away; the tendency with us is to look at material things as forming a solid resting-place for our hearts; it is amazing how substantial to us is the land of shadows, how we pursue them, though continually wearied and disappointed.

Secondly, observe that all these things shall not perish simply for want of abidingness in themselves, but according to the will of Him who created them, hence it is said, “As a covering shalt thou roll them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same”—that is, the existing One, who does not change—the word used for remain (‘4":,<,Ì) means to abide through all changes.

May our hearts find their rest and repose in Him, may we be both won and satisfied by Himself, so as to be both suitable to Him and to serve Him the little while we wait for Him.

“And thus our bark moves onward,
O’er life’s tempestuous sea,
While death’s unerring hand
Is stamp’d on all we see
But faith has found a living One,
Where hope deceiveth not,
For life is hid with Jesus –
And Jesus changeth not.”

Mark 7

There are two great subjects in this chapter, and I do not think it is amiss to divide it under these two great heads; that is to say, we have everything upon man’s side exposed, and every- thing on God’s side in goodness and grace and kindness manifested. I think this chapter will bear division into these two parts, the entire exposing of all on man’s side, and the manifesting in grace and kindness by our Lord Jesus Christ of all on God’s side.

Let us look at the first division, the opening out and exposing of all that was connected with man. It is very solemn to see that it is not here man in what I might call his worst condition. When God is pleased to let in His light in scripture upon the state and condition in which man is by nature before Him, He takes up (and I think you will find it, not in one part of scripture only, but all through) what we might call the best kind of humanity, not the worst kind; He lets His light in upon that which might be considered best in man, to show what was really there, even when there were external advantages which He Himself was pleased to confer. And when I say the best kind of humanity, I mean what the Jew was. I think this will be found set forth in other parts of scripture in other connections: for instance, all through the Gospel of John we see what was old and what was connected with the Jew contrasted with that which is new and that which has come in our Lord Jesus Christ. The Jew is in every case taken up in that way as the great illustration and instance of mankind in his most favored circumstances and condition.

Now let us look at how it stands before us in this chapter. First of all, we have depicted in a very solemn way the terribly low and degraded condition in which the Jew was found. The people had sunk down to this, that religion with them consisted in hardly more than the lowest conceivable external washing of pots and cups and brazen pans, and so forth. It had come to the most degraded and lowest form of ritual; that is the way the chapter opens. And I think it is not going too far to say that in proportion to the excess of the external is the diminishing of the internal; that where there is great attention to what is outside, there is but little thought of what is within. We see that all around us at the present moment, and that is what meets us in the very first instance here. There was great thought for what was external, the washing of hands, and so forth, what is called in the Epistle to the Galatians, “beggarly elements,” and in the degradation to which they had fallen, that is what their life of religion consisted in.

But along with that, we find here that there was a system of religious fraud, it cannot be called anything else, built up upon the abuse of what was of God in the ritual of old—that is to say, the consecration of property, for that is the meaning of the word “Corban” here. “Ye say if a man shall say to his father or mother, Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me, he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do ought for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition.” Now the meaning of it was simply this, a man was enabled, by this huge system of religious fraud, to so devote his property apparently to the service of God, under certain limitations, that he himself could avail himself of it whenever he pleased, but it was put out of his power to devote that property for the advantage and help of his poor relations. He, although he had consecrated his property in that way, was none the poorer for that consecration; all he had to say was “Corban,” when it was a question of his fulfilling the filial relationships of life to his father and mother, when it was a question of acting in the natural affection that is planted in the heart of man, and without which there is manifested one of the leading features of the last times. Instead of all that, a man could so retire from the need of even a father or mother that he could positively glorify God by neglecting the relationships of life. That was the meaning of “Corban,” and that was a great system of religious fraud; and the Lord exposes what I may call the inward thing in connection with that of which we have already treated. The washing of certain things was external, but this principle connected with the word “Corban” was what really came out from the heart; it was a deliberate intention, by fraud, to reserve to one’s self the right to use one’s property when one pleased, and yet to get the name of devotedness as having consecrated it to God. That is the first great element of the state of degradation in which this favored people of God were found here in this world.

But now there is another case, that not only was there all this external unreality, and this deep-seated determination to carry out the tradition of the elders, and the extinction of all that was correct and true with regard to the relationships of life, but there was also an empty system of mere lip service to God. “This people”—the Lord quotes from Isa. 29 in exposing the condition of man—“This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” Now how solemn it is to reflect on that. The lips were all in activity, the mouth was ready to attest its willing witness, but the heart, which is the real seat, the real source of all that God cares for and looks at, and that no other eye but His can penetrate, the heart was perfectly lifeless and distant as far as God was con- cerned. “This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” And you will find just as then so now, that the bowed head, the rigid posture, and the wretched face are all consistent with a heart distant from God, and that all that sort of external pietism, if I may so express it, has not got in it that which God accounts as the germ of that which is really true to Him. The root principle of this is unreality, and that is the root of all that prevails and asserts itself at the present moment. The crying need just now is a breakdown in the minds of men in what is called religion. That is the great need of the day. And let it not be supposed that any class or body so called can claim immunity from a system like that; let no one suppose that this has no voice for him or her. There is nothing that can so infect the heart even of a Christian, a real child of God and a true follower of our Lord Jesus Christ, nothing that so stealthily gets into the inner being and permeates it as unreality. I am assured that it is just one of the things that Christians have to be on their watch against at the present moment. We have to take heed lest we should be tinged and characterized by it. Thank God we do not need to go to human histories or human records to prove this. I often think what a mercy it is that it is not necessary for us to have to wade through the vileness of modern print and paper to find out what the true real condition of man away from God is: we have the record of it in the word of God. This abused, hated, slandered book has the whole record in it, not only of all that man is, and of all that man has done, but of what he will develop into.

Am I challenged as to development? I reply, I believe in the development of man, but in every kind of evil. I believe also in succession, but in succession of evil. Let those who will, grasp at both development and succession; I fully admit them; but that is the side on which they are. In the simple but very striking story that is told in the gospel history, and which we commonly speak of as the good Samaritan, do you observe the way in which that great truth is set forth by the Lord? “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” That is man’s course; that is the development that is marked out in scripture, and that we can see in the world all round about us at the present moment. Man’s course has always been down; he never went from Jericho to Jerusalem, from curse to blessing; he always went the other way; and more than that, he always will go the other way. There is that in him by nature, call it by what name you please, that he always goes from blessing to curse. It matters not whether it is internal blessing or external privilege, that he is introduced into, that is his course; his way is ever to go down. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” And so in the passage before us, we have not only what we have already called attention to, this external attention to lip service and mouth homage, but the heart far from God.

And observe now one thing more which marked this terrible state and condition of man, viz., that there were certain inventions of man in connection with religion, which in their entirety set aside the word of God; and that is the reason why the Lord lays such stress upon it here. He says, You have made the word of God of no effect by your tradition. There were the traditions of the elders, human traditions, and inventions, which might be perhaps in themselves harmless, as we would say; but it is most solemn when we perceive how cleverly the devil works to get all these things in between the word of God and the soul. The first thing we shall find is, that these traditions of the elders or human traditions were at the commencement taken up as supplementary to scripture. You will never find that the devil in the first instance faces you with the thing he wants; he always has a bait, and you know what a bait is, a bait is something that covers a hook; and so the first thing here is that this tradition, useful in itself, said to be exceedingly helpful, and ancillary to the mind of God, was supplementary to scripture. That being admitted by any one, that these traditions of the elders spoken of here were supplementary, and had their place and were of value; then comes the next step, and the person that gives way to the first is prepared under a very clever process for this, that they are of equal value with the testimony of scripture. That is the next thing: it would not be the first; as such it would not succeed; the mind is persuaded to believe them very helpful and supplementary first, but as soon as ever it becomes accustomed to that, then comes the next step. I trust you will allow me to speak plainly, because I think these processes of departure are very solemn, the ways by which we become accustomed to things that perhaps at first we would shrink from. A person would at first reject the idea of a tradition of man at all; he would say, Not so, I cannot consent to aught but scripture. But the devil is very clever and very persuasive, and if you argue with him, he will master you before you know where you are. If you debate with him, presently he will deposit his seed; he will gain his point, and having vanquished you there he will use the vantage ground to work upon and he will bring you to his side without your intending to go, and with a kind of reserve and resistance in your heart at first, but overpowered by his skill, you will admit the very thing that at the first you shrank from. And lastly, observe, and that is the greatest form of it when it reaches its height, these traditions are put above scripture. Here then are the three steps first, supplementary, that is the bin edge of the wedge by which the position; eventually won; secondly, equality; thirdly, superiority. I think you will find all these steps in the way in which the word of God is set side; and thus this blessed book, this very lamp of life that is in our hands, this wonderful revelation that we have from God, is set aside practically, and when the things of man come in, the things of God go out. This then is the third great proof that the Lord gives here.

But there is one point more which I would call your attention to, and that is with regard to the question of defilement. I believe all these points are of the first importance, as bearing on the present moment. The Lord next deals with the question of defilement, about which they were all astray. They were wrong with regard to the external attention they paid to things, wrong with regard to the way in which they could traffic by religious fraud, wrong in the lip service which sprang from unreality, wrong in setting aside the word of God by human tradition, and they were wrong in regard to what defilement really was and where it came from; and therefore it is that the Lord shows here, in a very solemn way, that the heart of man is the real source and real fountain out of which the whole torrent of evil, as it was practiced by man in this world, came. The stream flowed from that fountain; what is false and empty would fain persuade you that it was something from without which defiles; and if you allow that principle, that something from without corrupts and defiles, then you deny that man is in the condition in which God has declared in His word that he is; you remove the source from where the source really is, namely, the heart, the seat of everything that is foul and filthy. And therefore what the Lord does here is to bring us face to face with this: He says, “Out of the heart.” You observe the difference; there is immense force in the words, “There is nothing entering in that can defile”; it is not from without, it is from within, “out of the heart,” out of this corrupt fountain, out of this filthy cesspool of the first Adam, out of all that is here, proceed the thirteen outgoings which he enumerates, thirteen symptoms of the vileness and pollution that is in man’s heart by nature.

Now I have noticed often that there is a sort of modern sentiment (and there is very little more in modern times than empty sentiment) that rejoices in such a description as this for instance, “a noble profligate,” or of a ruffian who is said to have “kindliness of heart,” but whose real inner being is as gentle as his hands are red—there is a kind of sentiment of that nature popular in this degenerate age but for all that, the solemn words of our Lord Jesus Christ which lie embedded in this unfailing guide that we have from Him, remain true, and are evidenced by testimony that cannot be broken: “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, covetousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.” These are the things that defile. Dwell upon these words and see what an exposure they are, what a revelation they supply of all that man is in his own nature, even if he be in the most favored position on earth, externally blessed and privileged as the Jew was.

Let us now turn to the second which is a far brighter one. There are two instances given under this second head, of mercy and kindness, of the grace and goodness revealed in our Lord Jesus Christ, as in God’s heart, towards poor, wretched things here in this world: namely, the Syrophenician woman, and the poor deaf man with an impediment in his speech. Observe the way in which the Syrophenician woman is brought before us, the way we are introduced to this subject. First of all, the Lord, in consequence of the implacable hatred and deliberate refusal of His own countrymen, seeks retirement, and goes into the border country. But there is a little word added, “He could not be hid.” There is a preciousness, a divine sweetness about that word as regards our Lord Jesus Christ that is beyond all expression. I believe that is the doctrine of all scripture, Jesus never could be hid. I believe all scripture witnesses to that fact: the types, the promises, the prophecies of the Old Testament could not conceal Him, “He could not be hid”—blessed, precious words! As we stand now and look at them from the blessed vantage ground on which Christianity sets us, as we look back over these holy writings and survey their depths, that which meets us continually is how His Person runs like a golden thread through every part; and so here, literally and in fact, while He is in this world, though He retired, “He could not be hid.” And oh! there is something so interesting to the heart and its affections in the fact of this retirement. The activities of Christ and His withdrawals into the isolated places are all perfect in their place they give us an insight into who He was, and what He was, and what moved and actuated Him as the Servant Prophet, the character in which this gospel sets Him forth. Never did He press Himself into notice; withdrawal and retirement were what marked Him, specially in His service. Would to God it marked His people more in their Christian life and course! “He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall his voice be heard in the street”—lowly grace, lowly retirement. And yet there was a glory of goodness, a glory of kindness, and a glory of grace in His Person that burst out from all retirement; though He went away, “He could not be hid” I bless God for those words, and what they set forth to my heart as to our Lord Jesus Christ. Here “He could not be hid.” A poor wretched woman comes with one of the heaviest domestic trials that could bow down a human heart. His fame had reached her, she had built on what she had heard of Him; she had listened to the report with regard to Him, and on it she ventures to come. There are three things. said about her: I believe her creed and language are set before us in the fact that she was a Greek; and her nation comes before us in the fact that she was a Canaanite or Syrophenician, that is to say, a reprobate of reprobates, for that is really the meaning of it. Do you know that the Canaanite will be extinguished in the day when the Son of David is in power? And therefore this very striking case comes before us in order to bring out the wonderful mercy of God in our Lord Jesus Christ. A person that was unentitled in every sense of the word, and had no claim whatever; neither her race, or language, or creed, or origin entitled her in any sense to consideration. It is one of the strongest cases that could be brought before us in scripture to prove a little word in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, “abundance of grace.” Ah! this the case to demonstrate “abundance of grace” for one that had no title, one who was externally and in every way repulsive.

Further, observe what is said about her; she came, and she besought Him, and she fell at His feet. Thank God for those words! A poor Canaanite, a poor creature that had no claim at all, can come and beseech Him and fall at His feet. The fifteenth chapter of Matthew, where this incident is recorded according to the character of that gospel, furnishes the detail of the threefold test which she was passed through. If you examine it, you will find she was tested in three ways; first of all, she was tested by silence. “He answered her not a word.” Has your faith ever been tested in that way? Do you know what it is to have cried day and night to a silent Christ? “He answered her not a word.” Oh what a trial of faith that was! Could it be possible that He did not hear, or that He heard without attention? Could it be possible that His heart was not capable of being touched by her misery? “He answered her not a word.” But there was more. It was not only that He was silent, but the Gospel of Matthew gives us His positive refusal. What was that? It is not right, “it is not meet,” it is not just; “to take the children’s bread”: you have no title to it. She came as a child, that is to say, by using the term Son of David she came to Him under a relationship that she was not in, and He says, As Son of David I refuse you, it is not right to take the children’s bread. But there was even more than that, there was reproach—“and to cast it to dogs.” Thus she was tested in this threefold way, silence, refusal, reproach. And the word the blessed Lord uses is a very remarkable word; I do not think it is used anywhere else in the original of the New Testament except here. The word is the diminutive, which means “a little dog” the very lowest of its species, “It is not right to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to little dogs.”

So now faith is proved—through some test very much akin to this. I have met with Christians who have been sorely tested and tried in their faith. Peter tells us that faith will assuredly undergo trying, “That the proving of your faith, much more precious than of gold which perishes, though it be proved by fire.” The allusion here is to the proving of gold, the metal is subjected to the fire, and the flame is increased and increased until the image of the refiner is reflected in the coin. There is, observe, no mitigation of the fire, no reduction of the strength of the flame, until the image of the one who is dealing with it is seen in it. Faith is always subjected in that way to testing; and so this poor woman’s faith was proved in this threefold way.

But there is a beautiful little word here which is peculiar to the Gospel of Mark, which I must take notice of, taken along with the Gospel of Matthew, they make a beautiful whole. The Lord says to her, according to this Gospel, and this may have helped to keep alive the flickering flame of faith in her heart—“Let the children first be filled.” That left a little ray of hope for her poor heart. “Let the children first be filled.” And so she might have said to herself, “Well, there is a little reserve there; there is a crumb let fall on purpose for me.” As Boaz had said in other days, “Let fall some handfuls on purpose for her.” “Let the children first be filled”; and so her hope would rise and her heart would live on through the fire of testing, and her faith be nourished by His grace and kindness. And then it is beautiful to think how that may have given the first flush of hope to that poor broken heart, and she would reason somewhat like this to herself, “Surely He does not mean to refuse me altogether, surely He means that I should prevail, surely He intends to be overcome by my misery.” I can conceive how all that would pass through her mind as His gracious words first fell upon her ear.

Next observe her answer to Him, and it is very beautiful; she says, “Yea, Lord”; she takes up the very word in the original that He used, or at least the root of it, and she says, “True, Lord, I am only an unentitled, miserable, wretched dog.” She takes that place, this was her soul’s “Amen,” she accepts His verdict, she stands before Him unentitled, but her faith still cleaves to Him for the absolute goodness that was in Him. Behind all that dark cloud of testing that light was there, and it is lovely to think that it fell upon her heart. God grant it may be in your souls and mine when we are tested, to be able to say, like the patriarch of old, “When I am tried, I shall come forth as gold,” having the refiner’s image and the refiner’s likeness stamped upon the purified coin.

And now mark the word she gets from Him; “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” He did not praise her adroitness or her humility, but He commended her faith, the faith which the goodness of His own Person, as He stood there before her, kindled and kept alive: “O woman, great is thy faith.”

Now let us turn to another instance of the mercy and goodness which were manifested in our Lord Jesus Christ in this poor man that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech. We shall only notice two or three points. First of all, there was the faith of the persons that brought him, for they came and besought Him. I have no doubt that what kept alive that faith in their hearts was just the goodness that shone in our Lord Jesus Christ. The friends of this poor man, for he was powerless in speech himself, came, attracted by this. Just look what He does; He takes him aside, out of the town. Have you not found in your history that He has done that to you oftentimes? Do you not remember that time you were ill? That time you were laid low in fever? Have you forgotten that time when the heavy blow of affliction came into your house? He was then taking you aside out of the town. I believe the Lord in special dealings with us takes us thus aside. Of Jacob it is said that he was “left alone”; but it is a wonderful solitude, solitude with Christ. “He took him aside.” And then we have the action, which is beautiful and suited to the case, though I shall not speak of it now. But observe two things connected with the action.

First of all, He looked up to heaven. What does that convey to us? Is He not here seen as the perfect servant, “I came not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” He says, as it were, I have come from heaven, I am the Servant-Prophet out of heaven for God and men. How blessed, “He looked up to heaven.” All mission, all power, all grace is from thence—there is nothing except from heaven; the second Man is out of heaven; the true Servant was the One who was in the service of heaven. “He looked up to heaven.”

Then there is another word, “He sighed,” or as some have translated it, “He groaned.” Here then is the compassionate Servant, here is the tender heart that felt for all, that was touched by human misery, the One who passed unscathed and unmoved through everything, but felt it all. How blessed to have before us such a Christ, and to have revealed to us how He felt! how He groaned! how He sighed!

And then lastly, there is the word of power. The true Servant, the compassionate Man, and yet at the same time, blessed for ever be His name, the mighty God. “Ephphatha: be opened.” “He spake and it was done”; He had but to utter the word, and the result was there.

And then He sought retirement again; He commanded them not to make it known; He did not seek publicity, or popularity, blessed be His name—all that prevails in the church-world and world-church of to-day, was far away from the mind of Jesus Christ. No; He was the Servant out of heaven, that came to do the will of Him that sent Him. But they could not keep silence; their tongues must speak His praise. And I am sure that we, through grace can add our hearty amen to the words that went out concerning Him on all sides, “He hath done all things well.” How blessed to say that, as we have often sung it. And even though it may be through tears, and loss, and pain, and sorrow, through weary days and weary nights, still the heart that knows Him and that He has touched can say, “He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.”

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 2

It is very blessed and interesting to the heart to observe the position His own are found occupying in Acts 1, in relation to the promise of the Person who was coming, of whom we were speaking in our last.

First, they were in His own company, as the risen One, for forty days; He had fulfilled to them His promise ere He left them, “I will see you again”—their hearts were glad in having Him once more, the sorrow of their loss by His death was now behind them; it was the very same Jesus on whom their eyes rested, only He was with them in risen power, He had left behind for ever the sorrow of His path on earth—the cross, the grave; He was there before their very eyes in very truth as the risen One out from among the dead. Let us try and think what a blessed moment that must have been for Him and them. He, the blessed One, was there in the new estate of man beyond the bearing of sin, beyond death and the grave, risen from the dead, not yet “taken up.” They, His brethren now, were there with Him, fruit of His victory and triumph over every hostile power, owned by Him, as such to themselves, through the lips of the woman, to whom the world was but a tomb without Him; what blessed memories of the past, and realities of their then relationship with His Father now their Father, His God now their God, must have been present to their hearts. Further, they were expectants of a new and heavenly power they were to receive from Him when received up into glory. Let us observe here the beautiful intimacy that is brought before us in the words, “Speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.”(R. V.) He is here in all His resurrection life and power, first fruits of them that slept, yet His heart, full of divine love, is not removed, is not any the farther away from His own. What an immense blessing to the heart to know the risen Lord near us, that He holds us as friends and loved ones still. But further, observe we are told what was the subject of their conversation; the character of it was as we have seen intimacy, the subject of it, was “concerning the kingdom of God.” We find that this was preached afterwards by His servants, and among them by him who was especially the apostle of the Gentiles; in proof compare Acts 20:25 and chapter 28:31. There are three words here to which I would very particularly direct attention, as illustrating their position at this time in relation to the promise of the Father.

First, “wait.” They are therefore set as expectants of this heavenly endowment. This shows the very opposite to settling down here, out of which He their Master had died and risen again.

Observe the word here translated wait (B,D4:,<,4<) is the same word used in Gen. 49:18 in the Septuagint, and the connection there is very beautiful. Jacob’s blessing of the tribes, as in that chapter, refers to responsibility, and when he came to Dan, though owned as a judging tribe, and so Israel in him, yet he marks out that apostasy and power of Satan in Israel, which led the remnant to look beyond the portion of the people, unfaithful in every way, to Him who was the salvation: “We have waited for thy salvation, O Jehovah.” This marks expectancy here as the position of His own in Acts 1.

Second, “power” (Greek, ‘L<":4<). This was a new power with which they were to be filled, heavenly power; as we have seen, they were set by the risen Lord as expectants of this, and so they were found here in weakness, yet in dependence, out of the world and all that pertains to it, in an upper room, in prayer and supplication, “with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren.” What a lovely picture these verses display before us! and does not this upper room here fit well in with that other recorded in Luke 22:12, where we see Him, a Stranger in this world, with His own?

Then let us also observe those words “with one accord”; how blessed as the result of risen life in each, not yet united, for the Spirit had not yet been received, still as such expectants of the “heavenly gift.” This expression, “with one accord,” recurs eleven times in the Acts, and nowhere else, except once, in Romans 15:6. Third, “witnesses” (Greek, :"DJLD,H). Our English word martyr is derived from that translated witness. The qualification for a witness was this heavenly endowment for which they waited; they were to receive power at the coming of the Holy Spirit upon them to this very end. It is of the deepest moment to us to understand that a witness of Christ, was and is, of Christ rejected, yet risen, despised of men, but now exalted of God in heaven. If His testimony ended in martyrdom, as far as man’s wicked hands were concerned, they were to look for a similar end, and as a rule they so terminated their course, so that we may say, in a certain sense, for any witness of a once crucified and martyred Christ, or as Stephen was of a glorified Christ, to die a natural death is unnatural, and so of life as of death, to be a witness of a rejected Christ, one must be unworldly and unearthly.

Further, it is interesting to note the contrast between this and what we have in the Revelation; there the kingdom in manifestation is introduced, and the saints are kings and priests unto God and His Father, but when Acts is opened, they are witnesses, that is, martyrs to an absent rejected Christ and Lord in the power and energy of God the Holy Ghost. May we covet more and more to be in the true sense of the term His witnesses.

Mark 8 Dalmanutha

There are really four subjects in this chapter, namely, the feeding of the four thousand, the instruction at Dalmanutha, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, and the incident at Caesarea Philippi. I desire by God’s help to engage your attention with three of them, at this time.

First of all, with regard to the feeding of this multitude. You will observe one little word here that, I think, gives the key to the understanding of what was intended by the incident, and that is the word “seven,” for there are not only seven loaves multiplied, in the Lord’s grace, so as to meet the need of the four thousand, but the excess was seven baskets; therefore the word “seven” (though I do not desire to lay any unnecessary stress upon numbers), is, to my mind, deeply interesting in the incident. Elsewhere there were twelve, indeed the Lord alludes to it here Himself when He is instructing His disciples. He says, “When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven.” Now I believe there is a divine intention in every word of scripture, and that the alteration from seven to twelve or from twelve to seven has a divine purport in it. I would therefore invite you to think for a moment of what is conveyed to us in it. If we study and search for ourselves and examine the scriptures where the words occur, I think we shall find that where it is a question of human instrumentality twelve is always the number used; twelve is always the completeness of man; whereas seven is certainly here, as I suppose it would be elsewhere in a bad sense, the perfection of what is superhuman, good or bad. Twelve is the human number and therefore it was seven here, because it is no question of what comes from man, or of the instrumentality which God is pleased to find and use in men, making them the subjects of it. But here, where the Lord is rejected (and that is what underlies the narrative in a very striking way), refused by the people as their Messiah, refused as the One who really had rights and claims over that nation—His own goodness and His own grace rose above all the need that was there, went beyond all the rejection which was in their hearts, finding the motives entirely in Himself, so that, rejected though He was, He still feeds them. Hence, I believe, the word “seven” is used because it is the perfection, fulness, and completeness of what is divine. And it is not contingent upon man’s reception at all; His own blessed goodness, that which was inherent in Himself, and found its springs entirely in Himself, rising triumphant beyond and above all the evil that was in man, acts in a grace and love entirely His own. How blessed to think of it, and to dwell upon it: rejected though He was, refused and cast out by that people, despised and disowned, still mark those words, they are precious words, “I have compassion.” Compassion for those that would not have Him; compassion for those that rejected Him; compassion, though He was an outcast and despised in the midst of His own! We in our littleness would have had the smallest of our compassions dried up; we could not have lived through the scorn that Jesus Christ received from men; however true the grace that was in us, feeble and small in itself it would have withered before the contempt of men. It shines out all the more blessed and more perfect in its own nature in Him. Do we enjoy the contrast? Do we respond to the blessedness that was seen only in Jesus Christ? Have our hearts dwelt on those words, “I have compassion on the multitude”? I will not send them empty to their homes, because they will faint by the way. Think of how He entered into everything! I do not think we take in sufficiently how the grace and kindness of Christ and of God come out even more in little things than in great things. And that is just where the contrast is with us. Somehow or other we rise up to great occasions, but very often little things unman us. Somehow we make a great effort and great attempts to match some great occasion that is upon us, but little circumstances, little difficulties, little besetments in ourselves, or else little things, little trials, little sorrows in others, seem to be so small that they are beneath us. But it was not so with God, it was not so with Christ, and therefore you observe the same thing exactly, not only in the Jehovah of the Old Testament, but in the One who was God manifest in flesh in the New. “I have compassion on the multitude.”

Notice the way in which that is met by the disciples; see how little it touched their hearts, how little they entered into it, how little they were set on fire by the goodness of Jesus Christ; how little they were really moved as He was pleased to express the boundlessness of the grace that was in His heart. Mark what they say: “From whence shall a man”? They never got beyond man; human resource measured all that was in their hearts. “From whence shall a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?” They owned no source from whence anything could come but man they were tied and bound down to man. Is not the generation we are living in very like that? This is the day of human resource, the day when man brings into operation all that he can in connection with needs and wants, whether in the church or the world; the day in which the strength of man, the arm of man, the energy and wisdom and power of man, are all looked to; and the danger is that God is outside, and that faith is lost in Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, and in what is divine. I see it in connection even with the work of God. I gladly and willingly rejoice to own any desire there may be in the hearts of any to bring the truth of God to bear upon perishing men and women; but faith in the old testimony of this word, faith in the message itself, faith in the power that is behind this word to apply it, faith to make it palatable, faith in it itself because it is attractive and has sweetness in it that no human power can add to—that is lost, that does not exist in this day. It is attempted to make it attractive, to mix it with all the miserable ingredients that man brings to bear upon it And why? Because the simple, old, blessed truth itself, the naked power of that sword that is in our hands, and the almighty power of God the Holy Ghost in using it, is lost sight of or given up, and man is turned to, just as here, “From whence shall a man?”. It reminds me of the words of the poor impotent man in John 5; he was lying there round the pool of Bethesda with others, and he says, “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool.” “I have no man.” Oh, how blessed it is to go back on these compassions, and on these resources which are here! How blessed to draw out of the fulness that is in Jesus Christ! And how easy it is for us to forget, as they did, past deliverances. Memory is but a poor help in the things of God, because memory fails and droops. There were past deliverances by Jesus Christ, and past interventions of power through Him, but yet the disciples had forgotten it all, lost sight of it, and turned to man.

Now mark the result for a moment. The Lord feeds them, blessed for ever be His name, and gratifies His own heart too. That is what is so comforting; He gratifies His heart in doing good to the poor, wretched people who would not have Him! But there is this remarkable word of the Spirit of God with regard to it; He feeds them and the need is met; but I desire we should get the sense of that little word, which expresses so much, “They did eat and were filled.” That is the result of having to do with Jesus Christ; here is the result of the opening out of His own blessed hand for us, whether temporally or spiritually.

In this we see the consequence of the bestowment of His grace when it is taken in, because it is said, “They did all eat”; and that is the word that is used in scripture for the appropriation of Christ by our souls. The very same word which we can understand in connection with taking in food for the body, is the word that is used for the appropriation of Christ in connection with our spiritual need. He says in John 6, for instance, “He that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” “Except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” That is to say, there must be the appropriation in faith of Christ. But when there is that, whether it be in the case of the bodily need, as here, or whether it be in the case of the soul’s need, wherever Christ is appropriated, there is fulness and satisfaction as the result of it. Have we proved that? Are we filled? Am I asked, What is meant by that? I mean this, are we satisfied? Has He in His infinite grace so met us, just as He satisfied the hungry bodies of these four thousand, that we can say in the words of Psa. 23, “He maketh me to lie down in pastures of tender grass”? That is because the soul is filled; it is the result of satisfaction; further, it is rest, repose. We know very well how that is just the crying need of God’s people at the present moment; there is but little rest or repose. It is all so like those instruments of two wheels, the only principle upon which they can go is motion, restless, often tumultuous, motion. And why is all this? Because the heart has not come to anchor, has not come to rest in the satisfaction that Jesus Christ alone can give to it. This sweet Test will never be found anywhere else; we may search and traverse the wide world round and over, but in vain, it never can be found in another. But, thank God, it is there in Him; thank God, there is rest there, satisfaction there. And it is not only in what He gives, but in what He can be to the soul. Here it was the bestowment of His grace and favor to meet the hungry bodies of men, and to satisfy their temporal needs; but what was true in bodily want is true spiritually. And therefore, having through grace to do with Him to-day, having personally appropriated Him for the wants and cravings and longings of the heart to-day, we can antedate that time that will come even for this earth, of which it is said, “They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountain of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” That will be a scene on this earth by-and-by; but that truth may be known spiritually in the soul to-day, in the midst of desolation and misery and wretchedness all round about. Let us then remember those two things, the seven loaves that were multiplied to feed the four thousand, and the seven baskets of excess over and above the necessity of the persons which were fed. I believe those two circumstances in the history give us the key to the understanding of the spiritual meaning of this incident, the fact that the provision was divinely perfect despite His rejection, and that the excess was perfect also. I love to think of the excess. We ought, when we bestow a favor, to do something further in the way of excess, to show that we are not exhausted by the gift. But I see that no one does that but God; when we show kindness we exhaust our resources, because our resources are finite; when He expresses His goodness, His resources are never exhausted, because the need could be no measure of the supply that comes from Him. We are finite, and our resources must fail; He is infinite, and finite need cannot exhaust infinite resources. The second subject we have here is the instruction by the Lord at Dalmanutha, which was based on this miracle, and on the audacious opposition of the Pharisees. The Pharisees came and got into conflict with Him, demanding a sign from heaven; That was audacious, bold unbelief, and He felt it, as He felt everything; “He sighed deeply in his spirit.” First of all, their hardened heart of unbelief touched Him; secondly, I believe there was also in it that He felt what, the influence on others would be of the religious leaders’ blindness and darkness. I have no doubt it was a forecast of His own cross and suffering. And then notice the words, “He left them and departed.” That is very solemn; it is final rejection; some one has called it “justas severitas” (hard justice); they rejected Him, He rejects them. And what makes it very solemn is that He never came back publicly there again; I do not say He never came back again; but as the great Prophet in works of mercy, He left them for ever, He never publicly appeared in the goodness and grace of His heart in that region any more. He instructs His disciples afterwards in connection with that incident in two ways. First of all, He says to them, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” Observe where they were when the Lord spoke those words. He had gone into the ship, the disciples were with Him, and they had forgotten to take bread; and He says to them, in connection with this terrible unbelief of the Pharisees, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” It is amazing that any person who has at all searched prayerfully the scriptures, should have any difficulty or doubt about the meaning of the word “leaven,” namely, that leaven in scripture is always and universally the symbol of what is evil. And yet you know the way it is used, and the extraordinary meaning that is put upon it, contrary to the whole tenor and teaching of God’s word. “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” What was the leaven of the Pharisees? It was that hypocritical, two-faced appearance of holy zeal for God, with desperate unreality in their hearts; externally the appearance of great zeal, but inwardly the very opposite, yea the contrast of it in every sense. That was the leaven of the Pharisees. What was the leaven of Herod? Servile cringing to the world: Herod was the very creature of worldliness and worldly circumstances. And there is another leaven spoken of that is not noticed here, and that is the leaven of the Sadducees, which is what is called at the present moment rationalism. The Sadducees were the rationalists of that day, and the Pharisees were the ritualists of that day, and the Herodians the worldly party. You get the three things, fleshly religion; occupation of mind with the things of God, as if the mind could grasp them; and the deep-seated, deep-rooted love of the world which marked the Herodians; those are the three. But the Sadducees are left out in Mark: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.” I desire particularly to call your attention to one thing in connection with this, namely, that when the Lord used those words they were not in a position to profit by the meaning. Was He to be blamed for using the word “leaven” to them? God forbid the thought in any heart, or that He ever used any word or expression save what was absolutely perfect and blessed, as coming from the lips of Him who was perfect God as He was truly and really Man. Yet He uses this word “leaven,” and He impresses the great truth of it upon them, and tells them to beware of it, puts them upon their guard, and yet they cannot profit. Here was the greatest of all teachers, here was by preeminence the great Prophet, yet His disciples, who were round Him and with Him, and were familiar with His utterances, were unable to profit by His language. Why? Just for the very reason many are oftentimes unable to profit by good, sound, wholesome words to-day. Why? They were not wilfully blind, but they were in fact blind; There is a great difference between a certain position in fact, and the will entering into it, so that the will as it were gathers it up to itself. The disciples were not wilfully blind, but they were in fact blind, because they took in so little of His Person, and of who He was and what He was. And hence we can see it is not enough to have good words, sound words, and words easily to be understood. But further, there is a moral condition and a moral state necessary to profit by the clearest words. There is a positive absolute necessity for a moral state, and condition, to be able to take in the instruction that comes from the clearest words. One of the most important things in this chapter is how they totally misunderstood the word “leaven.” How did they interpret it? Even that they had forgotten to take bread; they were in a ship at sea, and no bread; they connected the word “leaven” with the literal fact of the absence of bread from the ship, and therefore mistook altogether, and lost His instruction. But then this very position they were in here was the very suited one for this instruction; and I have no doubt in His blessed grace He had designed it all to lead them into the under- standing of the great lesson He had for them at that moment What was it? Why He was really leading them to understand what the heart would have in having Him. Oh that I had a better conception of it, so as to be able to convey it to others; but yet how blessed to be so led by Him, and to be so in circumstances for Him to lead, that we find out the absolute sufficiency and the absolute fulness there is in Himself, without anything else beside. How often we say, “That is indispensable.” But He would teach us there is nothing “indispensable” but Himself. He is the alone indispensable:

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want,
All in all in Thee I find.”

That, I believe, is the lesson here; they were at sea, had no bread, no provision; were utterly resourceless and utterly destitute, and the Lord brings before them one little, word, “I,” “I.” This is the emphatic word in the narrative. He brings Himself before them. What then if they had no bread? If the Maker of the bread was there, had they not all? What if no provision were there, if the One who did supply the need of four thousand and five thousand was there Himself? It is a wonderful moment when the heart is led into this great reality, the utter resourcelessness of man on the one hand, the entire completeness and fulness that there is in Christ on the other; “Jesus, Thou art enough.” Another has truly said that what the Lord brings out here is that continent of blessing on which the heart of old Simeon found its rest in days before, when he had the child Jesus in his arms; it is the shore the dying thief landed on; it is the place, far better than all else, that the apostle speaks of. And it is that unknown region to which every one of us, every Christian, must come sooner or later, either on a death-bed, or else as Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus. We know if death were to knock at our door tonight, if we had Christ we should not want anything else, beside Himself and His work.

It is an immense thing for the conscience that the work of Christ should be before the soul. The work that was done on Calvary’s cross, and nothing else, it is this which alone gives title to the soul; but the heart wants something as well as the conscience, and it is not only that I am entitled in the work, but I have a new footing and sufficiency in Himself. That instance of Simeon is a beautiful one. There was a man with prospects, and it is said that prospects are far more dangerous and have far greater effect upon us than possessions, because you know the value of possessions, but you cannot tell what a prospect is. Simeon, the earthly man, had prospects, and he comes into the place where the child Jesus was brought in by His parents, and when he saw Him, he took Him up in his arms, and when he had Him in his arms, he just said what in principle poor old Jacob said when his eyes rested upon his long-lost son, Joseph, “Now let me die; since I have seen thy face”: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.” His cup of happiness was full; he wanted no more; he had Christ. Have we? We know something of His work: have we got Himself, and got Himself in such present possession, that though we are in the poorest human circumstances, without a loaf, without a meal, destitute of what people call the indispensables of life, we can give thanks, and say, “I have all and abound, I am full.” That is what comes out here; that is the instruction that was conveyed, and this was the very place to convey it to them.

One word more in connection with it. We are passing through a critical moment, a moment of deep trial. I have no doubt there is a sort of sifting and shaking all around and about in every circle—domestically, commercially, politically, ecclesiastically, wherever you go you must be arrested by it: it is a peculiar moment we are in. But I treat now of what relates to us ecclesiastically, of what belongs to us as Christians, members of Christ’s body. If there is one sphere in which the power of evil has shown itself with a freer hand than in another at the present moment it is in the church of God. Alas! it is there the devil has wrought with tremendous virulence and created the most solemn confusion, scattering on all sides like the wolf that he is. We have stormy waters and elements lashed into fury by the rage of the enemy of God and man; the rolling tide terrifies many a timid mind, and the tendency is to forget the One who is in the boat: we think He is asleep, and, rudely oftentimes, we go to Him and say, “Master, carest thou not that we perish” This lesson comes to us wonderfully in this way; the person that in his own circumstances and history as a solitary individual is walking the highway of this world, has learnt this great lesson, Christ is enough for me, Christ is sufficient for my heart and soul, the person that has learnt His friendship, and His company, and the fulness there is in Him, that can say through grace, Well, thank God, Christ is all I want here, that is the person that will, stand for Him in the midst of present departure. It was so with Paul; he was forsaken by everybody: “At my first answer no man stood with me”; he was actually left alone; he had not a companion, he had not a friend, he had not one to stand by his side at that moment: yet he could face the most dreadful tribunal in the whole world, and did not quake before the thought of Nero’s judgment-seat. Why? Because in his soul he had found out for himself the sufficiency of Christ. That is the reason. Thank God Christ abides and is sufficient. And therefore amid the general departure and giving up of truth on all sides the heart finds its rest in Him who is ever the same, and its delight is the word, “Thou remainest.” Christ remains, the Holy Ghost remains, and the supreme authority of scripture remains; and as long as we have that trinity, as it were, Christ, the Holy Ghost, and scripture, may God keep us holding fast for Him.

You will find the sufficiency of Christ comes in in that way; it is Christ Himself in all His own blessedness. This is what the disciples learnt; they were brought into circumstances, into that very position most suitable, in His perfect wisdom and grace, to find out this, that having Him they had enough. Oh, what a charm to the heart to find out that Christ is enough! What a reality! It is nothing that we can see, we cannot show it to anybody; but it is a treasure that only our own heart knows; a secret, if we like to call it so, of our own souls with Him, with which a stranger intermeddleth not. This keeps the heart, this steadies the soul; this is divine anchorage for the present moment.

May God in His infinite grace above all things lead us to know what Christ is. I feel it to be the pressing demand of the moment. How little we think about it! May our hearts more and more find out what He can be to us; and though destitute of everything in this world, without a loaf, without bread, may we be able to say, Thank God, He is there, and all sufficient as well. This is resurrection ground in figure; and when we reach resurrection ground there is nothing but Christ; and this is a large place, a wealthy place; Christ makes it this, and here we are outside of all else. It is possible had everything. And so now, there are those that truly love Him, but they have not found out Christ enough, Christ sufficient, Christ all. As the apostle expresses it when he says, “I have all and abound,” again,”Christ is all,” again, “I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ.”

This simple incident at Dalmanutha is full of the most blessed instruction in this way, teaching us what there is in His dear Son, of fulness, sufficiency for every want and need of the heart.

(Notes of an Address.)

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 3

But the moment of endowment had now arrived, and all was ready for the fulfilment of the promise, and the bestowment of this clothing of power. Pentecost as a fact is now before us, and it came between the Passover and Tabernacles.

It is well to observe that, as a Jewish feast, the feast of weeks, first it was dependent on the Passover, so that we may say, if there were no Passover there could be no Pentecost; further, it was supposed to mark the giving of the law, and It was beside the dedication of all the fruit of the land. (See Lev. 23.) But when we study it in all the deep and blessed connections in which it comes to us as the day of Pentecost “fully come,” as in Acts 2, how precious it is in all its surroundings and settings. Let us dwell for a little on the great face itself. Let us see what it means.

When the Lord Jesus was pleased to “become of a woman,” a great fact was present to faith wherever it was; Jesus on earth was Emmanuel, God with us; how blessed the precious memories with all their fragrance of His life of twofold witness on earth, how solemn that “His life was taken from the earth”; men crucified Him, but God raised and exalted Him. Then in the risen Lord we find the testimony of God for us. But this is not all, He who died and rose again has ascended into the heavens, is exalted at the right hand of God, and having received, as the exalted Man, the promise of the Holy Ghost for others, He in the “fully come” day shed Him forth, so that we have now in Jesus exalted and glorified, and the mission and pouring forth of the Holy Ghost by Him from heaven—the great witness to the immense and wonderful fact of God in us.

Oh, how little the reality of this fact has laid hold upon the church of God, and even where there is more or less clearness as to the truth of it, alas! how little the living power of His presence in us is known or enjoyed.

Permit me to draw your attention for a little to certain surroundings of the great fact itself. First, let us note that the filling of the material structure with the divine glory was not though striking themselves, are as nothing to what is set before us in Pentecost, for now the bodies of those who have been cleansed from their sins in the blood of Christ, are the dwelling-place of His Spirit.

Further, observe the blessed contrast with 1 Kings 8:2; there the divine Presence drove away the priests, so that they could not stand to minister in the presence of the glory; but now God in His infinite grace makes us His habitation!

Again, observe how that in Pentecost we have Babel reversed. (See Gen. 11.) There man had been scattered and his language confounded, there was, as has been said, no brotherhood as it were left in the earth, and all as a result of man having exalted himself, a bold and daring attempt, affecting divine rights; but now we find all the mournful consequences of this reversed, the second Man out of heaven came and humbled Himself, and being highly exalted, and a name above every name given Him, He had baptized with the Holy Ghost.

I would call your attention to the form the descending Spirit here takes, namely, “cloven tongues like as of fire” in the cloven tongues we have the symbol of diverse languages and far-reaching testimony, and in fire, grace founded on righteousness. There can be no doubt that the great point here was power for testimony; it was in the might of this heavenly power that the knowledge of Christianity was to be diffused even to the utmost parts of the earth; if concentration was the principle of Judaism, diffusion was that of Christianity.

Lastly, let us note the different form which the blessed Spirit took in descending upon our adorable Lord and Master; we read in Luke 3:22: “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him.” How blessed to see in this the Father’s seal of His own beloved One, the fitting type of all that the Lord Jesus was in His own precious Person the dove, the bird of heaven, the bird of love and sorrow, was the suited form and shape for the blessed Spirit to take in descending on Him. (See also Psa. 68:13.) And as we follow His lowly, lonely path of devoted service to His Father through this world, we see how in it all He was as under this heavenly dove, the meek and lowly and tender One, passing through all the scenes of human misery and sorrow, the willing servant of every need, soothing every broken heart, wiping away every tear, lifting up every fallen one, yet marked by meek retirement in it all, He did not strive or cry, neither was His voice heard in the streets. Oh that our hearts, as we better know Him now in glory, may more appreciate the precious testimony shown us in Him whom God the Father thus sealed.

Condensed Notes of an Address, No. 3.

Bethsaida

Mark 8:22-38

We have considered the first two incidents in this chapter, and I would ask your attention for a little just now to these last two incidents, that is to say, the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida, and the circumstances connected with the Lord’s intercourse with His disciples at the towns of Caesarea- Philippi.

First of all, we have this gracious incident in His life in connection with this blind man, and I think you will see this stamped upon the narrative from the first, that such was the kindness and the goodness of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world that when need came to Him, He never repelled it. He oftentimes withdrew Himself from mere prurient curiosity and the idle gaze of men, but wherever there was need, felt need, and expressed need, in whomsoever it was found, there was the ready answer and the willing and loving response of His blessed heart. And I think you will admit that it was just that which accounts for the constant recourse that was had to Him in cases of distress like this. There was something about Him here in this world that drew the heart to Him. Now when I think of that, when I trace those wondrous footsteps of mercy, when I think upon that marvelous grace and kindness to all, even the most unworthy, I cannot help feeling how sadly in contrast with it we are; I cannot help being impressed with the sense, that we, Christians, are to a great extent repellent, that there is a sort of icy coldness about us, a kind of hard callousness, which drives away rather than draws. That is the first great impression that His lovely, blessed grace makes upon the heart with regard to His poor people in this world. We seem to have got His Spirit so little, and to reflect His love so little, and we seem so little to be in His, company, and in the atmosphere which marked Him in all His blessed ways here! It is that thought which impresses itself at once upon my mind when I read the words with which this incident opens, namely, that they brought this man to Him. Evidently the friends of this blind man felt, there is no one for us but Jesus Christ. Do we feel that, friends? You have got some person blind who is perhaps very near to you—to whom do you bring him? You have got some case of distress, some case of want or sorrow; it may not be something connected with yourself, but it is near you. Where do you bring that case? Have we come so in contact with One whose equal is not to be found, the “One among a thousand,” verily, that we can say, Well, there is a heart that I can count upon for this distress, and can come to with this misery? I will bring my need, my want, my affliction, to Him. That is what drew these people here, they brought this blind man to Jesus. Oh they were wise in doing it! They did well; they counted upon a love that never disappointed, and a willingness that never refused, and so they come with their, burden. That is the way the incident opens.

What does He do? I want you to ponder the little things that are here; there is a sweetness about every word which expresses the ways of our Lord. First of all, He took this man away from all human influence; He took him “out of the town.” Let us learn something from that. There is an unhealthy craving for publicity at this moment; people seem to think that they never can do anything except they are under the blazing sun of men’s eyes. Ah! I do not see that in Jesus Christ. I see retirement; I see how entirely His whole heart was far away from all that kind of thing amongst men, idle curiosity, human influence; a harmful influence it is, too, man’s influence. He took him away from all this. And if you are to be the subject of the grace of the Lord Jesus, you must submit to be removed from human influence and from all curiosity of that nature. This action was just as if He said, I want to have you altogether alone, apart by yourself, with Myself. Are we ready for that? Are we ready to be blessed in that way, to get your sight in that way? That is the first action of the Lord Jesus in this case.

But there is another: mark it well, I beseech of you. “He took him by the hand” I do not know a picture in the gospel history that is more affecting to the heart than to see that blessed One taking the poor hand of a blind suppliant for His mercy. He took him by the hand. Oh the grace of it! Oh the blessed familiarity, as it were, the homeliness, of that dealing! Is not this a sight for angels and for men to see the Savior, He who was both God and Man, “God over all, blessed evermore,” that blessed One whose like was never to be found, taking the hand of a poor blind suppliant, and leading him just as tenderly and as graciously as you would see any blind man to-day led by his little daughter or his little boy? These are things that touch the heart, and give us to understand something more of His character who was “God manifest in flesh” down here. “He took him by the hand and led him out of the town.” He brought him away from all idle gaze and from all human influence; He led him forth Himself.

But now mark once more, and look at the verse for an instant further, that we may get distinctly the action before our thoughts. “He took the blind man,” we are told in verse 23, “by the hand, and led him out of the town.” Man made the city, the town, the public place, the place connected with all that is of man, his skill and power; He took him outside all the range of that influence, all the deteriorating effects of that influence, “and when he had spit on his eyes”—mark the words, He anoint those eyes with that which came from Himself. I believe that to point to the efficacy of the Person who was there; it was something that came from Himself that was applied by His own hands to those sightless eyes; there is a loveliness about that action, “He spit and put his hands upon his eyes.” What was of Himself, with all the virtue that it had, with all the blessedness that is in it, He applied to the blind man’s eyes. Do let us take that in, for I believe that is what it sets before us, the personal virtue that was in Jesus Christ Himself, that was applied by His own hands to the sightless eyes of this poor suppliant.

Mark the effect it had; there are two things I earnestly want to bring before you. Do you notice that this cure is a little in contrast with the Lord’s usual ways in the gospel history of effecting cures? I have remarked when speaking in this place before, that the characteristic feature of all the cures wrought by our Lord Jesus Christ in this world was the instantaneous effect of the exercise of His power, that He spake or He acted and the person was at once cured. Man is very well up in the healing art, but he cannot do that, he cannot effect a state of whole soundness at once, immediately, from disease or misery or wretchedness. Here it is gradual, and this is the only instance where it was gradual. This is the solitary exception to the usual presentation of instantaneous power in the actings of the Lord here; there were steps in it. Now I am going to try and account for those steps for a moment, for I think there was a reason why this was not instantaneous as in other cases, and why it went on from one step to another.

The Gospel of Mark, as we have seen already, is the Gospel of the great Servant-Prophet amongst men, and particularly, I suppose, amongst His own people Israel; it is the Gospel of service. But I am not altogether contented with merely calling it the Gospel of service, I prefer to call it the service of the pre-eminently great Servant-Prophet. Of course it is the Gospel of service, but it is the Gospel of service of the Servant beyond all servants. Therefore you see service in Mark set forth in its entirety and divine perfection: it is the service of One who, though He was “God over all blessed for evermore,” yet was truly and really Man, and who rendered that service as Man here in perfection. It is the perfect service of the perfect Servant; the perfect Servant must render perfect service; no other can. And therefore when God gives us a picture of what service is, He does it by setting before us the Servant. And we get a better conception of what true service is when we have the true Servant before us.

Now you will observe all through this Gospel of Mark, in connection with the service of the great Servant, that step by step there was a growing rejection of His service, even by Israel and by men; that they refused the greatest service that ever was rendered in this world. It was not only that they refused His kingly rights; we have that elsewhere; but they refused His gracious ministry here, they refused the acts of mercy which he rendered as the true Servant here. And just as there was this growing rejection on the part of Israel and of man, so I see along with it (which, I believe, is inevitable and which always follows) the secondary means come in, and the spontaneous going forth of divine power in human sympathy and human grace and human kindness that marked Him, was chilled by the unbelief and refusal that were found everywhere amongst men where He rendered that service. And hence, I believe, in the very chapter before us, in this very instance, the gradual nature of the cure, and the secondary means employed in the cure. The others were instantaneous, as we have observed before; He spake the word and it was done; He put His hands upon another case and the cure was effected; but here it is more at a distance, and it is more intermediate. Now, I believe that accounts for the character and nature of the cure here.

But again, as soon as ever the spittle was applied to the eyes of this man, mark what the effect was. The Lord’s question to him, which was the next point, brings out the effect. He asks him if he saw anything. He says, “I see men as trees walking.” That is to say, that what he received was a faculty; he had not yet the power, the ability, to apply the faculty; he had got here the faculty of sight; he could see, but it was all confused, “men like trees walking”; nothing, so to speak, was in its right place; he could not see anything at all before; now he could see, but he did not see anything clear correct, right. Now let us learn this, from the incident, how that a man may be born again, but have as yet no power. Power always comes with the Holy Ghost; and when a person has the Holy Ghost that person has power, because the Holy Ghost is power. I do not believe in what is called a second baptism; I do not find it in scripture. I find in scripture that if persons have the Holy Ghost they have Him though He may be grieved. I believe that at the root of what is called a re- baptism of the Spirit of God, lies a grievous error. And I will tell you what it is; it is shifting the want of power over upon God, instead of taking the blame to ourselves, because we have grieved the Spirit of God. That is the secret of it, and that is a very serious thing. A grieved Spirit of God leaves you powerless, as far as action is concerned. Oh, dear brethren, the Friend within is sensitive. Watch: “grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.” He does not say, Look for fresh power, or fresh blessing. He does not say, Look for a fresh baptism. He says in effect, Do not grieve that power that dwells in you. If you are a Christian you have got the Holy Ghost dwelling in you. “Live in the Spirit,” “walk in the Spirit,” cherish the movements of the Spirit, minister to the Spirit, “grieve not the Spirit.” Observe how the other weakens all that, and therefore people cry to God to give them new power. If they would judge themselves the power is there.

Now I think we can understand the little lessons that we are learning, from the fact that here was a man who from being blind has got this faculty of sight, but as yet cannot see any-thing clearly, cannot put things together distinctly; “men like trees, walking.” The second thing which completed the cure is this: it is lovely to mark verse 25, “After that he put his hands again upon his eyes,” the Savior’s hands, the Lord’s hands; first there was the spittle, then the hands, “and made him look up.” Ah! Jesus never makes you look anywhere else; man will make you look within, he would occupy you with the floating feelings of your own poor heart within; but Jesus always by His Spirit makes you look up. There is only one place to which His blessed hand will point your eyes, and that is the place from whence He came; thank God we can say, the place where He is now gone. He came from it, He dwelt in it in heart and affection even when He was here; He was “the Son of man who is in heaven” even when He was upon earth; He was out of heaven as He came here, He was in heaven when He was here; He is in heaven now in body. And oh! where can we go, what place is there, I ask you affectionately worth our eyes being on, except there? He “made him look up,” He put His hands upon him, He connected him with power. I notice that power always turns the eye there; weakness and self-occupation turn it within; that is the difference. Power connects you with that place; power turns your eye to that place; feebleness is in introspection; microscopic investigation of your own miserable heart and your own miserable feelings; the hands of Jesus, the power of Jesus always lead you up. He “made him look up.”

And now we see another word. He “saw every man clearly.” It is a very strong word in the original; in the Greek language the force of the word is “He saw everything far beaming, far shining, far and near.” (J08"L(TH) Now he can see everything; he has got power, he can concentrate his faculties; he has not only got sight but he can concentrate the sight, the thing is perfect and completed.

And then mark what the Lord says to him. O the blessed retirement of the Lord Jesus Christ! O the lowly, beautiful path that He walked in this world! He did not want popularity, He did not seek admiring crowds to come and own Him; He did not want to be lauded by men here as the great friend of every one’s need. “Neither go into the town”—you will only get deteriorating influences there—“nor tell it, to any in the town.” Do not go into the town for yourself, and do not tell it to anybody in the town for My sake: that is to say, do not you go into the deterioration of human influence; you have been under divine power, keep away from human influence; you have been the subject of divine blessedness, now avoid the town. O dear friends, would to God I could warn you as my heart feels I would like to warn you! The influence of the town is solemn! You will not think me hard, will you, if I say this—I always feel, O what a struggle it must be with the children of God in London to keep out of the influences of a great city like this! There is a kind of influence that it has upon us almost insensibly to ourselves: it is not that we wish it; but it is exactly like the effect of an ill-drained house upon a man that lives in it; he is not conscious of the polluting influence of the gas that is there, yet he is affected by it. So, beloved friends, I believe it is with us; I read a great deal of the town in scripture; do not go into the town, take care of the town. The meaning of it is, beware of human influence and its deteriorating effects upon the soul. And then one word more; “Do not tell it to any one in the town.” He did not want to be popularized, did not want the laudation of the crowd, or to pose as a great philanthropist or benefactor of mankind. “Do not tell it to any one in the town”; He sought retirement. Are not the ways of our Lord Jesus Christ here in this world lovely? The Lord help us to gather these things up and learn from them.

Look at the other incident. When He came to Caesarea Philippi, the first thing I observe in these verses is that He found speculations and opinions rife. That is just what it is to- day; there is plenty of speculation, plenty of opinion, of reasoning and argument. It is a day of speculation. We want to know God’s thoughts; man’s opinion is not worth much. It is a wonderful thing to see that there is no subject under the sun that people are so ready to speculate, and reason and argue about as subjects connected with the truth of God; and those are the very subjects of all others where their opinions and arguments and reasonings are entirely out of court. I beg to say affectionately to you that we are not competent to form an opinion at all about those things; they are out of your range and ken. It is idle work, and yet people are indulging in it continually every day. So it was here. What was wanting, but what was absent, was just this—faith. And that is what is wanting today; alas, there is but little faith. What is wanting is faith in His word. I bless God with all my soul for grace to believe every word that is in that book; be it foolish, weak, senile, contemptible as much as ever you like, I believe every word that is in that book. And more than that—and I am thankful for this opportunity to avow my faith in it—I not only believe what is in that book, but I believe that in the language in which God has been pleased to communicate the subjects that are in that book, He chose the words and gave the words to the persons who communicated them. I do not believe that it contains the word of God; it is the word of God. And there is where faith rests. It rests on that which is the word of God. Oh, thank God for that certainty; I see people positively driven about like leaves before the wind on every side; they are all adrift, they do not know what to believe, and it ends in their believing nothing at all. Why? Simply because they have got away from the word. And that is exactly what it was here at Caesarea Philippi; opinions, speculations, arguments, reasonings, and no faith at all. There are two circles, you observe: first, the outside circle, “Whom do men say that I am?” Well, say the disciples, one says one thing and another says another, and no one is right. Then He comes to the inner circle: “Whom do ye say that I am?” That is a home question, is it not? Supposing the Lord Jesus Christ were to come into this company tonight and put that question direct to each one of us here, “Whom do ye say that I am?” Personal, pointed, is it not?

And now mark; there is one man here who is taught of God, who has obtained his information, not from his brains, or his intelligence, or his education; he did not derive it from any human source or from any antiquated medium down here in this world; he received it direct from God, and his answer proves it. You are the Christ, he says; you are God’s anointed Man, that is the meaning of “the Christ” It is interesting to note, in passing, the difference between this gospel and Matthew in this incident. I believe you get the whole confession given, but one gospel records one part and the other gospel records the other. Matthew records what suits his gospel, Mark what suits his. What Matthew records is, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That is what Matthew specially lays stress upon, and therefore you get the very truths that are connected with that revelation to Peter and that confession by Peter. “Son of the living God” pointed to His triumph over death and His resurrection glory; and there- fore the Lord unfolds to him then and there the great truth of the church. That is not here at all, because that is not the subject of Mark; that would not be in keeping with the object of the writer of this gospel, though It was in keeping with the object of the writer of Matthew. What was in keeping was, “You are God’s anointed Man, the anointed Servant-Prophet of God; you are the Christ.” Now the Lord says, The time for that testimony is past, do not tell anybody of it. That testimony was fully rendered, and therefore it ceases now. They had rejected Him; the thing was over; and He falls back upon another glory, a glory that was connected with another title that belonged to the Lord Jesus Christ that is used here, and He speaks of Himself as “the Son of man”: He does not say “the Christ,” but “the Son of man” (v. 31): “And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Now it is the rejection of this blessed Son of man here in this world; it is His suffering path that comes out; it is not the revelation of His glory as the Son of God, victor over death, and the founder of the church in its appointed time. No; here we find His path of scorn and rejection and shame and martyrdom at the hands of man; they should cast Him out, and refuse Him, and hate Him, scorn Him, and kill Him.

Then the man that was taught of God, the man that had got this divine revelation really, that knew who He was, that said He was the Christ, Peter, His own Peter, “took him and began to rebuke him.” Now, is not that a very sorrowful thing! Do you know what it came from, what made Peter do that? The Lord treats it in a very solemn way; “You are Satan,” “Get thee behind me, Satan.” What was that principle in Peter that led him to that action? It was inherent worldliness that stumbled over the cross; it was the unchecked and unjudged worldliness of heart that could not bear the shame that came upon the Master whom he loved. O dear friends, how solemn it is to think of it! I believe that is one great lesson we learn from this incident. A man may be very sincere, may have true faith, may truly love Christ, and yet not know himself at all, and, as we find here, the flesh within not be judged so as to use in faith the revelation he had got, and to understand the deep meaning of it in Christ’s path. That is what affected Peter. Worldliness always shrinks from the cross. Ah! friends, the cross is the test today. Talk to people about heaven, or about Christ and His grace and goodness, and they are very glad to hear it; tell them what He speaks of here, tell them of His scorn, of His shame, of His rejection, of His murder by men, tell them of that cross, and they shrink from it. I beseech of you to weigh these things over and look at them. It is very solemn. Do you want to be a follower of Him? I hear people ask that question sometimes, Are you going to be a follower of Jesus Christ? Are you going to be a servant, a true servant through grace in your measure, of that blessed One? Do you long to serve Him and follow Him in this world? Do you want to have your feet in His footsteps? I cannot conceive that any child of God would not say, “I want to have my footsteps down in the footsteps of my dear Lord and Master? Then let me show you the path now for a moment. We will just read the verses, and they will show it to you; I do not need to say one word on them (v. 34): “And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also, he said unto them, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” I avow to you, I am profoundly impressed with the sense that popular Christianity will not have this at any cost. We are very glad to have the cross for salvation; how do you like it for your path down here? You are glad to have it to get your sins forgiven, glad to have it as a passport to glory and as the road to heaven; do you like it in your path down here in this world, Christ’s cross, Christ’s shame, Christ’s rejection? People have shrunk from it; they will not have it. On the contrary, what we find now is that the world, forsooth, is pressed into the service of Christ, and so we have that greatest of all contradictions, and that ugliest of all appearances, a thing called the Christian world. Oh read those verses, brethren in Christ, here tonight; I would put those verses upon our consciences and upon our souls: “If any man will come after me,” if you want to follow Me, to have your footsteps down in My path, to be in My circumstances, to be My disciple, “let him deny himself.” And that is a great deal more than self-denial; self-denial is a very good thing, but that is not denying yourself; many have self denial who do not deny themselves. To deny yourself is a very big thing. “Let him abnegate himself to death.” Let him be out of sight, and kept there, not under the water and out of it again, but under the water and kept there, kept out of sight, unrecognized, unrecognizable; “let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” That is the path. There is no other for Christians, there is no other for those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, as my concluding message to you tonight, I press it earnestly and affectionately upon all our hearts here—Christ’s solitary, lonely, rejected, outcast, forsaken, despised, refused, scorned, hated, despicable path in this world, is the path of all that would follow Him. Now is that the path that you and I are on, that is the question? God meets us with it tonight. It is a very easy thing to merely float down with the stream of current Christianity, and there is a certain amount of credit attached to a great deal that is done, a sort of applause, a kind of “well done” from this world; as if it were capable of judging or appreciating anything at all that is of God! But oh! to be hated for Him, scorned and rejected for Him! As the Lord says to that church amongst the seven churches, to that one feeble, weak little company, that just had strength enough to keep their heads above water, so to speak, “I know your. works”; as much as to say, nobody else would recognize them or give you credit for them: “I know your works; you have a little strength and you have expended it upon Me; you have kept My word and not denied My name.” Well, I could not wish anything better for you, beloved friends—and I do wish it with all my heart and soul—that His path might be your path and mine through grace. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”

The Lord Jesus Christ grant that His own words may stick fast in our souls tonight, that what we have learnt from this beautiful instance of His grace and goodness here may really be revealed to us by His own power, so that we might more truly and really and whole-heartedly be found in His footsteps and in His path, for His name’s sake.

(Notes of an Address.)

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 4

We have had before us the endowment of the Spirit in fact and the form in which He was pleased to descend and abide on the Lord Jesus, and on those who had received the remission of sins through faith in His death and resurrection. We also observed certain marked surroundings of the great fact itself, and the contrast presented in the effect produced by the divine presence in the Old Testament (1 Kings 8:2) and on the day of Pentecost, when God in His infinite grace was pleased to make the redeemed His habitation. Let us now, as the Lord may be pleased to help us, meditate upon three things which the believer is said to have as the result of the heavenly gift.

First, it is said we are sealed. (See Eph. 1:13; 2 Cor. 1:21, 22.) Now it is very clear that persons were and are born of the Spirit, but the Holy Ghost Himself coming down and dwelling in those who had already believed on Jesus, putting them consciously in the place in which He was with God, is quite another thing; it was the immediate result of the perfection of Christ’s work and glory, where there was faith in it, and observe it was no question of experience or a work within, it was the seal of faith, and this sealing gives the intelligence and consciousness of the new position the believer is in before God in virtue of redemption. It has been well put thus—“The sealing of the believer with the Holy Ghost on the ground of his faith in the Person and work of Christ, who has accomplished the work of redemption and sits on the right hand of God, so that he knows the efficacy of that work and his place before God, as a son and in Christ, is a truth as clearly stated in scripture as can possibly be, and constitutes Christianity and the Christian as a present state of things: certainly as to guilt removed, present sonship in divine favor, and joy in hope of the glory of God.”

There is another truth brought before us in the sealing with the Spirit, namely, God taking possession of us as His own, it is the mark of His ownership of us; He puts his signature on what is His. How blessed thus to be His, and to sing—

“Since Thou hast borne sin’s heavy load
My guilty fear is o’er;
Made Thine by virtue of Thy blood,
I’m seal’d for evermore.”

Next let us consider as to anointing, which is also in connection with the Spirit. (See 2 Cor. 1:21, 22.) I would first say that sealing and anointing are, I believe, coincident in a sense, sealing being more personal, and anointing having a more general bearing. It is well said that “Sealing is the act of giving the Spirit. I put a seal on a document, and that is the same idea. The anointing was putting oil on a man’s head, and it is the general fact that the oil is put there; but the sealing is the effect on the individual. If I say at a coronation,

‘The Queen is anointed,’ it is a simple fact; but that fact secures her there as Queen. The anointing is a great deal more than the sealing.” There is another very precious feature of the anointing or unction, and shows how the blessed Lord Jesus Christ has associated us with Himself, for it is His own anointing which is the testimony to our being baptized by the Holy Ghost, “Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God” (John 1:33, 34). It is very blessed to recall our own precious Master’s words, after His baptism and temptation, in the synagogue of Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.” (Luke 4:18) Further, we find the word used in reference to the blessed One twice in the Acts, namely, “Thy holy servant Jesus, whom thou didst anoint” (Acts 4:27). Again, “Jesus of Nazareth, how that God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38).

It may be clearly seen how that, as another has remarked, “The ceremony of anointing was related to all important offices and ministries of the servants of Jehovah under the old covenant. The priest was anointed that he might be holy unto the Lord (Lev. 8:12). The king was anointed that the Spirit of the Lord might rest upon him in power (1 Sam. 16:15). The prophet was anointed that he might be the oracle of God to the people (1 Kings 19:16).

Oh that our hearts may enter into the blessedness of all this, as it is said: “But ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things” (1 John 2:20); and “But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him” (1 John 2:27).

Condensed Notes of an Address, No. 4.

“the Holy Mount”

(Mark 9:1)

I desire to bring before you only the first part of this chapter, that is, the magnificent scene of the transfiguration. The first verse properly speaking belongs to the previous chapter. In the last verse of that chapter, which has been already before us, the Lord says: “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” Now I believe that the transfiguration of our Lord was a specimen and example of the coming kingdom and glory and power of our Lord Jesus Christ; indeed, Peter in his epistle tells us distinctly that this was made known, and that it was made known on the holy mount. The light that is thrown upon the transfiguration by the utterances, through the Holy Ghost, of the apostle Peter leads us into what the real object and purport of our Lord was in bringing up His disciples to witness it; and it is that scene I desire to fix your thoughts and minds upon during the little time we are together tonight.

First of all, you will notice that the same companions of our Lord who afterwards witnessed His agony in Gethsemane, are the chosen witnesses of His glory upon Tabor. Now that brings together two things that are kept together, and which are blessed for our hearts continually to keep together, that is, the suffering and the glory. The very same chosen witnesses of the glory here were the witnesses of the suffering afterwards. O what different scenes they were! The Lord was the subject of both; He was indeed the central object of both; but think of what a contrast there was between all this transcendent brilliancy of light and glory which shone out from Him even to His raiment on Tabor, compared with all the depths of the loneliness of His agony and passion in Gethsemane! O how blessed to keep both together! And how privileged these disciples were to witness both, to see in the first place the height that He reaches as a man; because that is really what the transfiguration is; He reaches the very highest point in the glory of His manhood on the holy mount. Have you noticed, that with the Lord Jesus Christ as a man here in this world, the path was always an ascending one till this point was reached? Born in Bethlehem, brought up in Nazareth, His path inclined, He went on step by step in that wondrous elevation that belonged to Him until He reached the very highest summit of glory as a man on Tabor. From that point it was descending; He goes down from the scene where He was glorified, where He was saluted by the Father’s voice as supreme in His affections and in His heart, He goes down step by step from the height of the holy mount until He reaches the deepest, darkest depths of Calvary. It is different altogether from the way in which sometimes the Lord’s path is presented when we speak of Him as going from the cradle to the cross. Hardly that; He went from the cradle to the holy mount; as man on earth, His path was one of transcendent ascending glory up to that. He reached the very summit of it there, and from that glory He descends. When we think of the close of the pathway of suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is very precious for our hearts to take in that it was the Man who was pre-eminently glorified as a man on Tabor, who descended to the lowest depths of Calvary’s cross. Now the disciples that witnessed the one witnessed the other; they were the chosen witnesses of His sorrows and of His glory.

But mark how they were introduced to it. We are told in verse 2 of our chapter that “He leadeth them up.” I believe, that for every sight of this kind, that character of leading must be known by us. It is not only that He leads them, but He leads them “up”; and I believe it must always be so. The reason that we see so little is that the elevation upon which we stand is not divine; we must have the divine elevation to understand all that is connected with the divine. To see the glory of this blessed One we must be led “up.” It is interesting that that word “leadeth” is in meaning akin to the word that is used in chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke, after the Lord had made Himself known to those two poor disciples in the tender way in which He did make Himself known to them on the road to Emmaus. The way that the Gospel of Luke ends is very touching and sweet to think of; it says, “He led them out as far as to Bethany.” “He led them out.” Here it is “He leadeth them up.” Those two little words have a very deep significance for every heart that is open to receive them: “up” and “out.” “He led them out as far as to Bethany.” To get that kind of blessing, we must be led out.” He led them outside of all, so to speak, that pertained to the scene here, to the one spot that was the sequestered home of Jesus upon earth. “He led them out as far as to Bethany,” and then “lifted up his hands and blessed them.” The Lord grant that you and I may be led out for that blessing; I do not believe we ever get it except as “led out.” I do not doubt for an instant that there are blessings from God on all sides; but oh! there is a special character of blessing which no soul ever gets save as “led out.” Are you ready for that? Are you prepared to put your poor, trembling hand into His, and to say to Him, “Now, Lord, lead me where you will and as you will, but O lead me out to where this blessing falls.” So here the Lord leads them up out of the range of all human influence; He leads them into a high mountain, He gets them above, so to speak, the atmosphere of earth. He gets them outside the atmosphere of the city and of man, He leads them up to a high mountain.

But there is more in the verse even than that. Notice the words, “He leadeth them up into a high mountain apart by themselves.” I have been so struck with that peculiar action of our dear Lord and Master in every case in which He conferred special and peculiar blessing upon His disciples. And in every case in which He confers the like blessing upon us, I believe that we are made the subject of a gracious leading of Himself outside and apart, into a holy solitude and loneliness with Him, apart from every influence. Are not you aware of this, that the blessings so easily spoil, the color fades so soon? We need the privacy of His solitude to have this continued and fastened deeply in our souls and as well as apprehend it. Hence it is that they are taken up by Him and taken apart by Him themselves; and there, when all influences were aside and when man and man’s contrivances were all distanced, then we get the word, “He was transfigured before them.”

Now I would like you specially to notice that this word transfiguration is that which really gives us the English word “metamorphosis.” He was metamorphosed. It was a distinct change of the whole form and visage of the Lord Jesus. I believe that it was the brilliancy of light, the divine glory, if you please, that which came from God Himself, but that it worked from what was inward in Him out, even to His raiment. Mark in a very special way notices His raiment. If you compare the gospels—do not try to harmonize them, they never differed; you need not try to harmonize friends that were always in agreement: it will yield blessed fruit to you—if you compare Matthew and Luke with Mark, you will find that Matthew and Luke refer rather to His Person, and Mark lays more peculiar stress upon His raiment. Notice the words, for every little word is important in scripture: he says in verse 3, “His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them.” It is His raiment to which Mark particularly calls attention. I suppose it fell in with the object of his gospel to display even the exterior of the great Servant-Prophet Son, to show the brilliancy and the power of that light, which whilst it burst forth from within, as I believe, yet shed its own bright rays upon every part even of His clothes. And if you keep the thought of each gospel in your mind as you read it, you will find it an immense help in seizing, by the Holy Ghost’s ministry, what the purport of each gospel is. Here it is the Servant, the great Servant-Prophet, the Son in sovereign goodness, divine goodness, among people who refused Him and despised. Him. Therefore even that which was external in connection with the Lord Jesus, His very garments, reflected the brilliancy of that glory that put into the shade all human splendor.

There is another little thought in connection with the word that is used that I would call your attention to, because it will help you to see the beautiful accuracy of each part of scripture, and the design of the Holy Ghost in inspiring the vessels of revelation in the communications that He made. You will notice when you read the Gospel of Luke that the word “transfigured” or “metamorphosed” is not used at all. Matthew uses it, Mark uses it, but Luke, though he speaks of the fact just as the others do, does not use that word. Do you know why? For this reason: it is pretty clear from the internal evidence of the gospel that Luke wrote more especially, primarily at least, for Gentiles, Greek readers. Now the use of that word would in all human probability have connected the minds of those who had been Greeks with the old heathen mythology, and therefore, I believe designedly, that word is omitted. Because there is a design in the omission of words from scripture, just as much as in the employment of certain words of scripture; and therefore designedly on account of those for whom Luke was specially chosen to reveal the mind of God in the gospel entrusted to him with regard to the manhood glory of the Man Christ Jesus, he omits a word which would not have fallen in with the divine thought and mind in the communication of God’s will in his gospel; whereas the other evangelists, Matthew and Mark, used it because the readers of their gospels would be under no liability or temptation to be lured away into the darkness and even the vileness of heathen mythology. So far with regard to this word “transfiguration”; and my only reason for mentioning it is that it shows the guiding hand of God, not merely over the subjects of scripture, but over the words of scripture. I have said before, and I say it again, and from the very bottom of my soul, and delight to say it, that I believe as profoundly as that I am in the presence of God, that the very words were given to the vessels of revelation as much as the subjects were communicated. It was not merely that they had got certain things to communicate, which we call revelation—revelation relates to the subjects, inspiration to the words—but they got the very words; they were not left to use what they thought the best word in their judgment, they were dependent upon the Spirit for the words. 1 Cor. 2 leaves us in no doubt with regard to that; “Which things,” says the apostle, “we also speak “; that is the vessels of revelation; “not in the words,” mark you, “which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth”; comparing spiritual things with spiritual, as our version has it; “communicating spiritual things to spiritual persons” is the real meaning of it; cast on God for the very word that would convey the revelation that God was pleased to give them, so that they not merely received directly from Him the revelation of His mind, but they got the proper vehicle whereby to communicate it. I hold, that there is no possibility of escape from it; if words mean anything, 1 Corinthians 2 means that; and if you and I are at liberty to take out of scripture what we think God has put into scripture, to form our own thoughts and opinions as to what is of God in scripture, and to reject on the other side what we consider is not of God in scripture, we are making ourselves superior, in what is called our verifying faculty, to scripture. The judge must be always superior to that which is judged; that which we pass the sentence of our minds upon must of necessity be inferior to our minds, if our minds are to be the discerning power so as to say, This is of God, and that is not of God, or the one is of God and the other is not of God. The truth is, it is all of God, in the subjects and in the words in which the subjects are conveyed. And this very omission here in the Gospel of Luke of the word “transfiguration” is a witness simply to that fact.

The next point here is, who His companions were: not merely who were the witnesses of His glory, but observe, His companions here. In verse 4 we are told that “there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus.” These two were the ancient fathers of the Old Testament; there was the great heroic law-giver, Moses, and there was the great lion-hearted prophet, Elijah, the typical chiefs of the ancient dispensation. O what a wonderful thing to see not merely the disciples of His love and choice, but to see who of olden times were the companions of this blessed One in this effulgence of His glory as a man here upon Tabor. Do you think there was distance there? Notice what is said: “They were talking with Jesus.” How blessed the intimacy, the holy familiarity of that word! We talk with those we are intimate with; we commune with those that are beside us, so to speak, in the same position. This blessed One is pleased to grant this intimacy to these Old Testament saints; they talked with Him. Do you and I know what that is? I daresay you know those sweet words—

“A little talk with Jesus,
How it smooths the rugged way!”

but do you know what it means? Do you know this holy nearness, so that you can talk with Him? It does not say that He talked with them; that would not be the same thing: I could quite understand that, but it would not convey to our hearts what this word conveys, “They were talking with Jesus”; they were in nearness, in intimacy, there was the absence of all reserve, they were outside everything that could check; they talked with Him. Lord give us to understand the blessedness of talking with Thee.

May I say to you in passing, that you will find it an immense comfort to your heart if you are pressed down with difficulties or trials or sorrows, to have One you can go and talk with about it. How many times I have heard the lamentation of many of God’s dear people when they have been sorely pressed, and the heart well-nigh burst, and they longed for some one to whom they could speak, and failed to find upon earth one to whom they could tell the depths of their hearts. And you know this, I suppose, it is only to your most intimate friends that you can tell your sorrows; you can tell your joys to anybody, but it is only to those that are close to you, and in all the nearness of affection and intimacy, that you can tell your sorrows.

Now I speak to you in this way because I have no doubt there are many who have—who of us is there here that has not some time or another, and God knows it may be now—some crushing weight of sorrow or trial or some pressure upon their heart. Go and talk to Him about it. O what a reality it is to talk to Him about it! He loves to hear. Talk with Him: find the relief there. You will find what a floodgate that will be to let that bursting heart of yours out to Jesus. He will keep the secret; He will never break faith with you. O how I love to hold a brief for Him in that respect, so to speak, and to plead for Him with you that you might know the blessed, precious relief it is just to go and tell the whole thing out. You cannot inform Him about anything that He does not know; but as you talk with Him just like these chosen witnesses of the Old Testament here, your heart will find a solace, you will find a pillow for your aching head and your weary heart. Now just go and unburden it, open it out, and talk with Him as they did. They talked with Jesus.

Now we are not told here, but we are told elsewhere, the subject of the conversation. A wonderful thing to think of; the subject of the conversation was “His decease.” A very remark- able word is used to convey that to us, the word that gives the English word “exodus”; they spoke of His exodus. He came in and He went out. I love to think of Him going out in that way. One of the Gospels always presents that; you will be struck with it if you carefully study it for yourselves; but I believe I am correct in saying that you will hardly find in the Gospel of John the Lord’s going out of this world presented in the shape of His death at all. Of course I do not mean to say that it was not really His death, because His death was the way in which He went out; but the Gospel of John nearly always, and the Lord when He speaks of it Himself too, speaks of it after this fashion: He was going out of the world to the Father; “When his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father”; “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again I leave the world and go to the Father.” And it is lovely to dwell on it in that way; that was His exodus. He came in and He went out That was the subject here of the conversation in glory.

Now I would like you to think over this for a moment. Is it not blessed to know that the subject of the glory is the cross? And there could be no subject more suited to the glory than the cross of Jesus. How wonderful to have the cross and the glory brought together like that! They spake of His decease, the accomplishment of the exodus that was yet to come. They spoke of it; there was communion, so to speak, of its kind and up to its measure there between them and Him; “they spake of his decease that he should accomplish at Jerusalem.”

We come now to a solemn part of this scene. While that was in progress, Peter who was always ardent, always ready, always quick and foremost in everything, makes a suggestion. Notice what it is. I can quite understand how his heart was oppressed with the thought of the transient nature of that converse and the fleeting character of that scene. And it is so like us, so natural to us, to long to perpetuate seasons of blessing; we long in some human way, to hold these moments of mercy before our eyes. It was a sort of testimony to the little continuity there is in us. “Master,” he says, or “Lord,” “it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles.” Do you know what to connect “it is good for us to be here” with? It was a great contrast with the shirking shrinking of his heart from the cross in the previous chapter. In that chapter, which we have had before us, when the Lord brings His cross and His sufferings and His pathway of rejection and scorn before them, Peter shrank from it, in the essential worldliness of a spirit that could not brook the thought that the One he loved should suffer degradation like that. I have no doubt the contrast was strong before him here; “It is good for us to be here.” It would not be good to have to suffer rejection and scorn and shame with Jesus, but it was good to be in this glory, and good to be outside of that which he shrank from previously. But unconsciously he dishonored his Master. Verily, it is very wonderful to see how quickly we can pass from one thing to another! He shrank from the cross of Jesus in chapter 8; because he could not brook the shame of it to be heaped upon One whom he loved; but here in chapter 9 he himself is the unconscious tool who dishonored Him. Because observe what he wants to do: he wants to bring Him down to a level with Moses and Elias. “It is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles, one for Thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias. For he wist not what to say; for they were sore afraid.” That is so very like Peter. Peter reminds me of a man that rushes into a sentence which he does not know how to finish; it is like one that embarks upon a journey and does not know what the end of it will be. “Let us make three tabernacles”: let us perpetuate this glory; let us keep up this converse; do not let it pass away; do not let it be like a wayfaring man that turns aside to tarry for a night; let us have it here permanently. He did not know what to say, for they were sore afraid.

While that suggestion was being made, and just as it passed his lips, mark the way it is met. (v. 7) “While he spake there was a cloud,” “a bright cloud,” Matthew tells us, a brilliant cloud, a bright shining cloud, a cloud that was illuminated with the brilliancy of light, a privacy of light which overshadowed them; it was the shekinah, the visible display of the Divine presence. That is the first answer to Peter’s suggestion; the bright cloud overshadows them. Is not there something very remarkable in that? God heard Peter’s words, the Father replies to Peter’s desire, and at once suddenly shows Himself; a cloud overshadows them.

And not only was there this overshadowing cloud, but mark, “a voice came out of the cloud.” You “will observe that three times during the progress of His blessed pathway upon earth that voice was heard; it was heard at His baptism, it is heard here, and it was heard also as He stood upon the threshold of His passion: in the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of His blessed pathway, the voice from heaven was heard. There is a sweetness about that. O how the Father loved to let it be known what His heart found in His blessed Son! What was this voice? First, “My beloved Son.” O how blessed it is to think of that! It is the expression of the tenderest and dearest and closest and nearest affections of the Father for the Son. Some one has said, and I accept it, that the moment you come to the expression “Father and Son,” you touch the fount of love, you get to the source, the great fountain head, of love. I believe it is true. So here the voice from the cloud says, “This is My beloved Son.” O, He says, I must have him all up for My own heart and My own affections. Thank God, He gives Him out to us; but He must have Him all up for Himself. His whole heart’s deepest, tenderest out-goings found their answer in Jesus as a man here. I believe it was in connection with His service specially—as the Gospel of Mark is in connection with service—that this beloved Son was the Servant Son here. “This is my beloved Son.” Put Moses and Elias on a level with Him? Put three tabernacles over them to bring them into equality? “This is my beloved Son,” He says. And now there is another word: “Hear him.” Silence every voice, silence every note, silence every song, silence all earth; “Hear him.” I ask you affectionately tonight, is that enough for you and me? Are we satisfied, beloved, just with that? Can you in the depths of your soul, and I ask myself the question with you, can we take those words up and use them?

“I have heard the voice of Jesus,
Tell me not of aught beside.”

Fine poetry! Is it true? That is the question. That is the Father’s thought, at any rate, that is what is in the mind and thought and heart of God; “Hear Him.” And that is what He wants us to hear. He calls us apart from this scene, apart from the din and the strife, and the turmoil, and the upheaving and the crashing of all that is round us in this world; He calls us to hear Him. Bend your ears to catch the sound of His voice. “Hear Him.” O, what sort of people should we be if we were only better listeners of Jesus Christ! What sort of Christians should we be if only we heard Him! What sort of testimony should we bear in this world if His voice entered into our ears and into the caverns of our souls! “Hear him.”

Now look at the effect of it? There is an effect produced, not only by this cloud, but by this voice, and a very blessed effect too; and therefore we read, “And suddenly when they had looked round about,”—because it all took place in divine rapidity—“they saw no man any more.” O what a mercy it would be if we saw no man any more! What an exodus that would be if men only retired and Christ only was heard! “They saw no man any more.” Well, alas, we cannot help seeing men until God clears the scene. It is a great thing not to hear them at any rate. “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” And thank God there is a moral effect, not a literal one, but a moral effect produced, where Christ alone is listened to, that you will find human sounds and human voices and human thoughts retire. And I believe that as the voice of Christ is heard, that as the face of Jesus by faith is seen, there is a moral retirement from the whole scene, and we walk in sweet forgetfulness; as another has said, “Too far for some, not far enough for others, but with Him.” That is the secret of it; with Him. “Hear him.” “Suddenly, when they had looked round about, they saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.” Thank God it does not say “Jesus only,” but “Jesus only with themselves.” There was the abstraction of His own blessed presence, and they were, so to speak, absorbed with Him. “Suddenly, they saw no man any more”; all disappeared, the scene was cleared; no man any more was seen but “Jesus only with themselves.”

Now, what a thing it would be for us tonight, if by grace and sovereign goodness we only heard that blessed One, if only we answered to the Father’s desire to hear Him, if only we let the sound of His own sweet voice into our ears and into our souls, and made this scene and the strife of it retire from our hearts, and we “saw no man any more save Jesus only with” ourselves! Do you think we should be losers? We should be immense gainers! O the gain, the bliss, the blessedness of it! Why, it would be just a foretaste of heaven; it would be heaven begun now! Because that is what will constitute heaven. People are very fanciful in their ideas about heaven. We go to meet Jesus. If you ask me what heaven is, I think I told you once before and I tell you again, I believe heaven is the place where Jesus Christ is praised and praised for ever; it is full of the presence of Christ; it is Christ. You will not find one syllable, not one single word, ever spoken of in connection with it but that. Says the great apostle, whose heart and soul was formed by Christ in this way, “I have a longing, an ardent desire”—for what? To be at rest? That is the way people talk. Why? Because they are not at rest now. “O to be gone!” Yes, that is to escape out of the troubles and difficulties of the world. Self will hold fast in our hearts as long as it possibly can. Not a word of that do we find in “I have a desire to depart and to be with Christ.” “Absent from the body,”—to be out of all its aches, and its groans, and its pains? No; “present with the Lord.” May the Lord in His infinite grace give our hearts to taste and know a little of what it is to listen to the Father’s voice now. “Hear him.” Then we shall find that there is a moral clearance of the scene, and it is Jesus only with ourselves. May God command His blessing, and bring His blessed Christ and fix Him more distinctly and livingly and powerfully in the affection of our souls, for His blessed name’s sake. (Notes of an Address.)

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 5

We have been dwelling upon the deep realities conveyed to us by the expressions “sealed,” “anointed,” in connection with the blessed Spirit of God; there is another word used in like connection, namely, “filled”; only observe that whereas being “sealed “and “anointed” is God’s act toward us, the being “filled in the Spirit” (B80D@LF2, ,< Afaith’s submission: it is not in any sense prayer, it is in every sense reception; the passive verb here employed is very suggestive, and seems to point to that which is the true condition to the Spirit’s incoming as filling. I believe that condition to be, the constant mind engrossed, the body yielded as a living sacrifice, and the heart the seat of the affections, submissive, meek, the great Redeemer’s throne.

The effect of the Spirit’s filling is set forth in what follows, even as the effect of wine drinking is said to be excess or riot ("FTJ4"). Do you ask what is meant in simple words by being filled with the Spirit, I would say, I believe it to be this, that the Holy Ghost takes possession in such wise, and is the only source according to His energy of the believer that all else is shut out. How blessed to be so controlled by the Spirit, that we pour out our hearts in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord.

Now it is important to distinguish between the gift and the gifts of the Spirit: these do not convey the same thought, though they might both be given on the same occasion. The gift of the Spirit is Himself given, the word for gift being ‘TD,"<, this is never confounded with gifts (P"D4F:"J"), these were powers with which people were invested for special purposes; whereas the gift of the Spirit was a common blessing, the portion of all who had been washed in the precious blood of Christ.

It is very interesting to the heart to see in what respect the blessed Spirit may be said to be a gift, I would say for two reasons:

1st, as given by the Father, for others, to the exalted, glorified Christ. (See Acts 2:33)

2nd, as received by the believer in faith when he has been washed in the precious blood of Christ. (See Gal. 3:2.)

How blessed to have on the day of Pentecost the very explanation given by the Lord Himself of all that was taking place there and then, and that too from the lips of His servant freshly anointed with this precious heavenly unction.

Note the one little word, the basis on which it all rests, namely, “exalted.” Christ set up on high, after all that had happened to Him below, is the divine explanation.

What could be more sweet to the heart that had tasted His love than to have Himself thus brought before it? And so it is here in Acts 2, Peter opens his mouth and delivers a precious sermon on the glories of Christ, as embosomed in scripture; under this anointing he finds Christ everywhere; another has so sweetly thus expressed it: “A very blessed thing it is that the Spirit should begin His work by testifying to the glories of the rejected, crucified Christ. Not a word as yet about grace; but going into the bosom of recondite scriptures, in Joel and the Psalms, and finding Jesus of Nazareth there—the crucified One, of whom the rabble of the earth had said, ‘Crucify him, crucify him’—the Spirit takes up and says, He is the God of heaven and earth. He goes to Psa. 16, and says David is not in that Psalm; and He goes to Psa. 110, and says, David is not in that Psalm. It is Jesus of Nazareth whose soul was not left in hell. It is Jesus of Nazareth to whom it is said, ‘Sit thou on my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool.’ It is admirable beyond all thought to find such an opening of a freshly anointed lip.”

Lastly, let us notice well here the very intimate connection between the heavenly power and the heavenly object. The blessed Lord Jesus had said: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me”—it is very evident that this means of Me in heaven, and Peter’s testimony in Acts 2, showing us Jesus made Lord and Christ in heaven, is supplemented by the fuller revelation given to him whom we may appropriately designate as the apostle from the glory.

May our hearts ever more and more rejoice not only in the heavenly comfort of the blessed Paraclete, but also in His heavenly testimony to Himself, the living One on high in the Father’s glory.

Condensed Notes of an Address, No. 5.

“Bring Him Unto Me”

Mark 9:14-34

There are two subjects in these verses of scripture that I will call your attention to this evening. First, there is the scene after the transfiguration, after the glory that He was exalted to upon the holy mount; there is the scene on earth, indeed, there is what we might call earth. We were dwelling upon heaven last week, and I trust through grace we got some little of the blessedness of heaven, the glory of Jesus, the Father’s voice singling Him out as the special object of His own ineffable delight, His beloved Son. But in our verses tonight we are in a different position altogether; we are on earth, earth with its discordant sounds, its miseries, its sorrows, its griefs, its heart breaks, for that is what goes to make up this earth. Do you not know it? Are you not passing through it? Do you not know that in this world death and sorrow are always at home? Ah, friends, we have got to leave it to find where true joys are; they are not here: we have got to leave the place here in spirit and in faith to find the joys that never fade, the place where the sun never goes down at noon; it is where Jesus is. How one’s heart enters into the saying of a poor colored woman that I read of some time ago to one that was in constant distress, and whom in her simple way she tried to comfort. Her heart never was in the clouds and gloom of earth, it was always bright; in her deepest distress there seemed to be sunshine ever in her heart; and her owner (for she was a slave) asked her once how it was that she seemed to be so little affected by all the difficulties and trials through which she passed; her simple reply in her own native way of expression was this, “Massa, it is always bright where Jesus is.” O friends, to live there! Alas! we too often visit there; some of us perhaps do not even do that much. But oh! to live there, to abide there! Now that is what this scene on earth brings before us; but I would like to say one word before we look at it together about the Lord’s charge after the transfiguration was over, so as to complete what we had before us already.

You will observe in the closing verses after the account of the transfiguration, when the Lord came down from the mount He charged His disciples that they should not speak of those things that they had seen till after He was risen from the dead; and then we are told that the mention of the resurrection seemed to have been like a piercing sword that went through their hearts. They reasoned with themselves what the resurrection from the dead must mean.

I believe there were two reasons in connection with that charge. First of all, He enjoins the silence which would deepen in their souls the impression of the scene of glory that they had just visited There is a wonderful power in silence; we lose so much by the noise and clamor of sounds either of others or of ourselves. There is an expression in silence far more eloquent than the sweetest notes that ever passed from mortal lips: and I believe He desires to leave, in that enjoined silence upon their hearts, the deep impress of the scene He had passed through. They were not to speak of it; it was to permeate down, as it were, into the very depths of their moral being, until the Son of man was risen from the dead.

But there was another reason, and that was, it was introducing that great subject of the Son of man’s rising again from the dead, and it was that which had pierced them through. It was not the mere fact of the resurrection in itself there would have been no question whatever in their minds with regard to resurrection; every well-taught Jew and every good and pious Jew believed in the resurrection; but it was the fact of His resurrection; “till the Son of man be risen.” It was not the fact of graves being burst open, or what is called, and indeed very incorrectly called, the general resurrection, for there is no such thought in scripture; I am quite aware there is in popular thought; but we have to learn from scripture. More properly speaking, there is a sectional resurrection: there is a resurrection of the just and there is a resurrection of the unjust; but a “general resurrection at the last day,” you will not find within God’s word. What really touched them and moved them was the fact of His resurrection; and I will tell you why. It scattered the dreamy thoughts of their hearts; it blasted their illusive hopes that all was to be made good by a living Christ, a Messiah known after the flesh amongst men. That death of His of which He spoke before, which was so abhorrent to their nature, which they stumbled over just as much as some stumble over His glory today, that death of His was implied in His resurrection. It slew the living hopes of their hearts, it broke up all their vain dreams, it brought this great fact to them with its momentous consequences, that their Master after all was to die. They could not understand it, they could not conceive such a thing. It threw their hopes the other side. God grant that, through His grace, you and I may so enter into it that it may have the same effect with us, a more real effect than it had with them. The purpose of it was to turn the mind the other side; and that is where He wants us. His resurrection opens up glories beyond; it closes all hopes this side the grave, shuts out all expectations this side the tomb, but it opens up vistas of glory, scenes of permanent blessedness beyond. Do you enter into that? Do you appreciate it? Does your soul take in that fact? Thank God, our blessings are beyond the grave! Thank God, all that is stable and eternal has been established in the immutable blessedness of the cross, and comes out in all the magnificence of the risen One Himself, in whom we are before Him. There is something exceedingly precious the more we dwell upon it in the fact that everything now comes out in resurrection. You know how you walk through country scenes in the spring-time of nature, and when you see everything ready to burst out, there is something very attractive to the heart in the fresh bloom and bursting forth of life in spring, after the long, dreary winter. Who would go back to autumn leaves, and to the fading scenes, beautiful as it were in death, of autumn? There a beauty in nature’s death, but what is it to the freshness and verdure and blessedness of that which spring pictures for us, namely, resurrection, resurrection out of death and beyond the tomb, the blessedness that is connected with the life beyond. How little it is entered into! Now that was the Lord’s purpose, in connection with this charge, to throw their hearts the other-side. And I believe He wants to do it now, and we are very slow to let Him do it, and slower still to follow Him. But these two things connect themselves with the charge: first, the deepening of the impression of the scene of glory upon their hearts; and secondly, to throw their hearts and expectations beyond the grave to the other side into which resurrection introduces them.

We have got now to the verses we read; we have left Tabor and we have got down to the bottom of the mount—come back, as it were, into this world. I have spoken to you a little, and I will not dilate on it longer, of the contrast be- tween earth and heaven. That is the first thing that strikes the heart in reading these verses. We must know a little of heaven in order to be able to form the contrast and appreciate it. We do so cling to this earth; I do not say the world, I am not speaking at all now of the moral character of things, of the moral stamp that is upon all that is here since the rejection of Jesus Christ; but I am speaking of the solid, literal earth that our feet walk on. We are drawn to it and we cling to it with an awful tenacity; slow to let go, slow to allow the moorings that tie us there to be parted. We must know something of the joys of heaven, the scene on high, in order to form the contrast. But when we do, when the contrast stands out before us, it is then we are made sensible of what this world is. You know we form our opinion of everything in the way of contrast. There is something bright and blessed and beautiful, and you contrast it with all that is passing and transitory and gloomy; but you must know what you contrast with. And therefore I say we must know a little of those blessed joys to be able to form the contrast with the scene that is here and its sorrows. That is the first thing in these verses.

The second thing that comes before us, and very blessed it is to think of it, is that when they came down from the mountain, and got into this place of distress and misery that is around us here, the countenance of Jesus—I say it with holy reverence—was resplendent with the glory that He had just been in; His face retained the traces of that glory which He had readied as a man in all its height upon the holy mount. That is what those verses really bring before us, and hence we read, “And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him”—“did homage” is really the force of the word. They were struck; there was a grandeur, a dignity, and a glory, that still lingered over that beautiful face. Oh, how little we are up to a scene like that! Amazement seized them; the force of the word is “exceeding terror,” “great dread laid hold upon them” when they looked at the reflection of the glory of Tabor still lingering upon that blessed face, as He came down to the bottom of the mount. I do not say for a moment that there were not glories that belonged to Him in His own Person, glories that were specially and peculiarly His own in connection with what He was. But as I was saying last week, He reached this eminence and height of preciousness to God on the holy mount; it was an ascending scale with Jesus Christ from Bethlehem to Tabor, up and up, until He reaches the very highest point, and then it was descending, down and down, to the depths of Calvary. And when He comes back from that scene He still wears that glory, and it was that which struck terror into their hearts. I have been greatly interested in looking at the disciples in the opposite scenes of His life. You will find that in Gethsemane they slept, and on Tabor they were afraid. Oh, how little up to His sufferings and glories we are! We hardly ever seem to be at home in either scene. In His sufferings they slept for sorrow. So do we; it is nature’s resource, selfish sorrow, self-consideration, self-ministration. They sought the resource of sleep in their sorrow; on the mount they were afraid, His visage terrified them, the glory repelled them. I think it is very convicting to our hearts to think how little we are up to either of these things. There is one great reason for it. No one could be at home in the glory till the Savior was there. And He must be there as having finished the great work done on the cross; He must be there as the Man who bore sorrows and griefs and pressure and judgments unutterable, to make that glory a home scene for you and me. It is not the mere fact of glory in itself, but it is who is there. If my Savior is there, the strangeness of the scene is gone. Is your Savior there? Is your great and mighty Friend there? Is the dearest object of your heart there? Is your portion there, Christian friends? That is the question. If the One who is One among a thousand, who is “chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely” to your heart, is there, the strangeness is out of the glory scene. That is the reason why they were afraid here; that is the reason why terror settled upon their hearts; there was no one there who had borne the judgment first. Afterwards it made all the difference. I bring that in because I believe it is a very important point in connection with it. The cross underlies everything; there must be judgment borne, death vanquished, the grave robbed of its victory, the whole question of sin settled, man as a responsible being ruined and lost, displaced, before our hearts can be at home in the glory of the One that has done it. When it is done, then you will find the contrast. I give you Acts 7 as an illustration of it. There is a man at home in the glory, in fact he has got no other home. Stones on earth, the hatred and malice and sullen malignity of hearts that could not do anything too much against Jesus Christ, were Stephen’s portion; but he found a home where no stone could ever reach him, he looked up and saw Jesus in the glory of God. You see the contrast at once; there was a Savior in glory then. In the scene we are looking at tonight there was no Savior as yet in glory; He was on the way to it, He was not in it yet; and hence they were afraid.

The next subject is His question. He witnessed the disputation that was taking place between the scribes and His disciples, and He asked this question: “Why reason ye with them?” There was a moral dignity and glory in the putting that question; and silence meets it; no one replied; there is not one that breaks that silence, but at last misery breaks it. I do love to see the way in which misery broke silence upon earth. Here it was a poor broken-hearted father with not only a son, but, as the Gospel of Luke tells us, an only son. Ah! these “onlys” of scripture are very touching to the heart. Here a poor broken-hearted father in the misery and distress of his need, with his only son before his eyes in a sort of living death, a state to which death would be any day preferable, breaks the silence of these wretched scribes. I have a most profound contempt for scribes—I believe the world is full of them in principle today—they are as clear as the moon but as cold as ice. Look at them in the account of the birth of the Lord Jesus. They had the scriptures of the prophecy at their fingers ends as we say; they could quote them, but they had not a bit of heart for Christ. There are people like that today, friends, do not be deceived about it. They could quote the scriptures; it was demanded of them because they were the exponents of the mind of God in scripture at the time, and they quoted it all correctly, too; I venture to say there was not a prophecy misplaced nor a word out of its true order; but there it began and ended what did they care about Christ? He did not warm up their hearts; there was no fire of holy love to burn upon any altar to the new-born babe there; not a bit of it. God keep us from being scribes; it is a despicable miserable sort of character. Here when He challenges them, there is not a word in reply. But reply comes from where His heart was far more gratified; reply comes from need and distress. And how many a case there is like it in the world tonight, cases of moral possession. Here is a case of literal possession; here was a poor child, an only son, afflicted with a dumb devil; that is to say, a devil who could give sounds, but nothing articulate in them. That is the meaning of “dumb” there, because you will find sounds and cries uttered, but entirely inarticulate. This poor father comes and says, Look upon my child, my son: and then he relates the malignity of the devil, “Master, I have brought unto thee my son, which hath a dumb spirit; and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him: and he foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away: and I spake to Thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.” I want you to fix your thoughts for a moment, dear friends, on these two things here; I would to God that we thought a little more of the terrific blinding power of Satan, the malignity of the devil, the sullen malice of a vanquished foe but with the most tremendous power. You little know the power that is exerted in Satanic wickedness in the world today. Now along with that, observe the weakness of Christ’s own, the inability to grapple with Satanic virus, the inability to use the power which they had so as really to act for Christ in such a scene as this. I beseech of you to think of it. I must say it plainly to you with deep grief, that I believe if there is a picture in God’s word which describes more solemnly than another the people of God, it is just that picture; “I spake to thy disciples to cast him out, and they could not. O how solemn it is! Satan’s power, Christians’ weakness, the feebleness of Christ’s own! And there does not seem even to be a sense of it: would to God there were. If you saw people lowly and humble and broken-hearted because they were so little able to stand against Satanic power, your heart would have some little cheer; but when you see them elated and heady and self-satisfied and self-laudatory, it just simply breaks the heart. Those are the two things that come together in proportion to the virus of Satan is the weakness of Christ’s own people. “I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not.” They had no power.

Now look what follows. There are two things, of which the first I am going to speak to you about is too often passed over. Look at verse 19 for a moment. I do not interpret that verse in the way that people often read it. “He answereth him, and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me.” I see two things there. I do not believe that that was intended by the Lord of life and glory in the least degree as anything like a reproachful chiding of His poor disciples. I do not believe He intended, when He used those words, to send any iron or dart into their souls, however much they deserved it. But what I read in the verse is the suffering, and the grief, and the anguish, and the pain, of the heart of Christ “O faithless generation.” Ah! it was His own heart that was panged and pained. The dart went through that tender heart; as the verse of the sweet hymn expresses it:—

“That tender heart that felt for all,
For all its life blood gave,
It found on earth no resting place,
Save only in the grave.”

I read in that verse the griefs of Jesus, the pain of Jesus. And it is blessed to see it in that way; how He was touched, how He felt everything, how He was not unmoved by the circumstances through which He passed, how it entered into Him. In a Christian way it will help to illustrate for you a passage of scripture which is full of the deepest blessedness for our souls. It is put strongly in the epistle to the Hebrews; it is put in a double negative, and you know a double negative is far stronger than an affirmative. It says, “We have not a high priest who is not able to sympathize with our weaknesses.” The double negative makes it so strong there, as much as to say, “Thank God, we have a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.” Now this verse in Mark helps to cast some kind of light, by way of illustration, upon that beautiful verse in Hebrews. Here were His compassions, here was His heart touched and moved with the sense even of the inability of His poor disciples, as well as of the misery that they could not meet.

But now look again for a moment at the last two or three words of that verse; they are very sweet. If we have the sorrows of Christ, thank God we have the resources that are in Christ. Listen; “Bring him unto me”: think of that! O brothers and sisters in Christ here tonight, you have had some case of distress or sorrow or pressure or anxiety, you have had some loved object that your heart has yearned over, and you longed to see emancipation for them from the power and thralldom of Satan, and you thought, perhaps, I will take him to that person, I will take him to that man, he is a devoted brother, he is a mighty preacher; or, I will take her to that sister, she is a devoted woman, a prayerful woman; and you have gone and have come away heart-broken. Listen; “Bring him unto me.” O the blessedness of that! Let us learn where to take our difficult cases, dear friends; let us learn where to take our impossible cases, the impossibilities to our hearts, and the impossibilities to the hearts of others. Let us learn the resources that we have in a living Christ, a present Christ, a loving Christ, a mighty Christ: “Bring him unto me” He says. Thank God for that word! The Lord in His infinite grace give your hearts and mine to enter into the preciousness of it; “Bring him unto me.” Come direct; failure and breakdown and sorrow all round about, disappointment and vanity all round about, not a green spot, yet thank God Christ remains; He never disappointed anybody yet; “Bring him unto me.” All I can say in the face of that verse is, we are fools if we do not take Him at His word.

Well, they brought him, and no sooner did they bring him than the devil shows his power more. You may be assured if you want to get anybody to Christ, if ever the devil roared he will roar then. There is nothing that stirs up the fury of the foe, and there is nothing that moves his malignity like getting some one into connection with Christ. You try to bring an object of misery and wretchedness to Christ, and you will move all the hatred of hell and all the malignity of the arch-fiend. It was so here.

There is another little word. The Lord asks a question in verse 21, and I believe there was a deep tenderness in His heart as He asked that question of that father. I believe it was the probing of faith, the trial and testing of the man’s faith. “How long is it ago since this came unto him? And he said, Of a child.” Now see the effect here of that little probing by Christ upon the heart of the poor father. He says, “Of a child,” and then from giving the information he bursts out into a passionate appeal which his broken heart stirred up, and he says, “Ofttimes it hath cast him into the fire, and into the waters, to destroy him: but if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us, and help us.” That was a little bit more disrespectful in mode than it really was intended; yet, beloved friends, I am bold to say it is far more true, weak though it was, than many a prayer which you hear from the lips of people today, because it was real; there was downright reality of heart in it. It was not a made-up prayer—there is so much of made-up prayers, you know—it welled up from the soul of the man who, though weak in faith, still was genuinely true in the bottom of his heart. “If thou canst do anything,” he says, “have compassion on us and help us.”

Now mark the Lord’s reply; “If thou canst believe”; it is a blessed thing that He says, everything is possible to belief. The possibilities of faith are wonderful; I know no limit to them. “If thou canst believe”; it is not a question of My having power, but it is a question of your having faith. See how He brings the thing into its true place, its right position “If thou canst believe, all things are possible”—I am not disposed to limit that; I thank God, with all my heart for it; “all things,” not “some things”—all things are possible to him that believeth.” The poor father has the need of his own heart stirred now. It is not merely a need in his affections for his poor son, but now the need of his own heart expresses itself: “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief” I do trust you, I take you at your word, I cast myself upon you; but I know I am very weak in it. “I believe help thou mine unbelief.” O beloved friends, to me that is perfectly lovely, perfectly beautiful. There is a moral beauty and a moral grandeur about this moment that is reached in the history of this man that is beyond anything I know.

And now comes the moment of power. When you come to the end of yourself, then comes the moment of power. And this moment of power is grand; there is wonderful glory about it. Look at the difference. There was excitement in the multitude; and that is what you will find in people today; it takes very little to excite people; it is an excitable age and an excitable moment we are in. But look at the quiet grandeur, the dignity, the glory of Jesus Christ here. He turns to the devil and He says, “I charge thee,” I whom thou durst not disobey, I who have all power over you, I who bound you by My own intrinsic perfection in obedience, and who will break your head in death by-and-by—“I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him.” That is the moment of divine power; He spake and it was done. And then the foe shows his sullen hatred again; for he does come out, he could not do otherwise, he must obey, he must yield, he has met his conqueror; he does come out, but he leaves the traces of his malignity behind him. And that brings out one other little word here, and it is very sweet; “Jesus took him by the hand.” I love these touches. The very hatred of the devil is the background for the tenderness and compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ. He that commanded something to be given to eat to the daughter of Jairus, He that ordered the restored son of the widow of Nain to be handed over to his mother—I read the same heart here. You know that beautiful little touch in the Gospel of Luke, “He delivered him to his mother.” There is a sweetness in that; the raised up son is passed over to the poor widowed mother that had lost the last thing of all she valued in this world. So He stretched out His blessed hand here, and he raised him up. O blessed Jesus, would that we knew Thee better, would that we looked to Thee and that we clung to Thee more!

Now that is the scene at the bottom of the mount, and I pass over with only one word, the Lord’s instruction to His disciples as to their powerlessness. In verse 29 “fasting ought not to be inserted—you noticed that when I read the verse I left it out—it is a mistake of the translators to have put it in. It occurs in Matthew but not in Mark, and I will tell you why. It says, “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer,” that what they lacked was simple, whole-hearted dependence, real surrender of everything for complete dependence upon Him; that was the lesson. And that is the lesson of service, that is what service means; and the Gospel of Mark is the gospel of service. Service is successful where it is dependent, and what awaits power is dependence. “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer.”

The last subject is the way the Lord announces in the closing verses His coming passion. And when He speaks of His death as He does, what was to happen to the Son of Man, what He was to pass through, do you notice what is said? They did not understand it, and they were afraid to ask Him. And then a little while afterwards we are told He brought it out from them. “What were you disputing about by the way? what was it occupied your thoughts by the way,” He says to them. O, by the way they were occupied with what I am afraid occupies a great many Christians now, which of them should be the greatest. Ah that comes very home. Many a charmed circle on earth is supposed to be outside the region of that sort of thing is just the very arena of it. Eminence, position, that is what they wanted a human elevator to get a little bit high up in this world, that is what was in their mind. Now I want you to put these two things together for a moment. Mark what He says; He brings in the cross. The mind and thoughts of Jesus were upon the cross. The accomplished decease, the ignominy and the shame that He was to undergo at the hands of man, that is what was in the Savior’s thoughts. What was in their thoughts? Why, to be somebody; “who should be the greatest.” Do you notice how the two things come together here? O what a revelation, what a search-light the cross is! That is what searches us, and finds us out. I know no searchlight like the cross: it casts its bright flash on all that is within, sealed and hidden up, and often dressed up in some pious guise and form. That was the awful revelation that came out here; they were powerless in the presence of the devil, and they were faithless under the search-light of the cross; and all those awful principles that obtain in the world, ambition, jealousy, envy, variance, emulation, strife, all that was at home in their bosoms and in their hearts. That is the reason why the cross is brought in here. O what a detector! What an exposer! How it scattered their illusive dreams! How it broke up all their cherished projects! O what a revelation of them! These are the things that come to us. I am convinced this is the want, next to being established in the work of the cross, is to have a little more of the cross itself. It is the great need of the moment. Flesh can delight in glory, can talk even of perpetuating it, as Peter did on the mount; he could say, “Let us make three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias”; do not let this be too transitory the flesh could even find its pleasure in it. But the cross: that is where the rub comes, that is the great detector, the great searchlight; it brings out everything. The Lord in His own infinite grace just bring His own blessed Christ and His cross before our hearts tonight, that as we look at Him in all these beautiful scenes we have traversed, the kindness, the sympathy, the pity, the con- sideration, the goodness of Christ, we may think of all these things. And do not forget that little word, “Bring him to me.” I am speaking to somebody here tonight—somehow or other I have a sense of it in my soul that there is somebody listening to me—who has some life sorrow, some impossibility. Listen to those words. “Bring him unto me.” Remember the love of His heart; remember the pang that went through His breast—“O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?”—I feel your faithlessness I feel this misery; I feel the wants and pains of the distressed I feel for the weakness of the church but the resource is in Me; “Bring him unto me.”

I leave that word with you. The Lord in His own grace apply His own word to our hearts this night, and draw us closer to Christ, and give us a better sense of what there is in Him, His infinite resources in the resourcelessness that we find in ourselves: for His blessed name’s sake.

(Notes of an Address.)

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 6

I would now as briefly and as simply as I can bring before you some of the operations of the Spirit. Let us guard against the tendency, too common at the present time, to both separate and on the other hand to confound too much Christ and the Spirit; I mean, to separate Christ and the Spirit in operation in us too much, and to confound the work of Christ for us with the Spirit’s work in us.

Now, the first operation of the Spirit to which I would draw your attention, is what is called new birth, and set forth in detail in John 3. Let us observe how it is introduced. In John 2 we have man set forth on his own side, and also in relation to God; the wine is out at the wedding feast—“they wanted wine”! What a revelation! Man’s brightest day is a failure; this sad picture is completed in the record given in the close of chapter 4, where we are given the story of the nobleman’s son who was sick at Capernaum: all this tells us what man is on his own side, how it is with him there; but we have him also exposed in relation to God in verses 23, 24. Even faith in Jesus, as founded upon a demonstration which could be addressed to human intelligence, was worth nothing. Men might be truly convinced (there were such at that time and there are such still) whether by education or by the exercise of their mind; but in order to be in relationship with God, there must be a new nature—a nature which can know Him, and which answers to His own. Many believed in Jesus when they saw the miracles that He did (v. 23); they concluded, like Nicodemus, that a man could not do what Jesus was doing if He were not what He pretended to be. The conclusion was perfectly right. Passions to be overcome, prejudices to be laid aside, or interests hard to sacrifice were not concerned in the question. Man’s reasons judged rightly enough of the proofs given, the rest of his nature was not aroused. But the Lord knew man; He knew with divine intelligence what was in him. There was no lack of sincerity perhaps, but what there was with these men was but a conclusion, a human conviction, which had no power over man’s will; nor against his passions, nor against the wiles of the prince of this world. “Jesus did not trust himself to them.” There must be a divine work, and a divine nature, to enjoy divine communion, and to walk in the divine path across the world.

Now it is in connection with this that we find the revelation of the first operation of the Spirit; it is sovereign, it is irresistible. Observe the comparison to the wind, and the force of the little word “so” in verse 8.

Further, it is well to see the three main aspects of this divine operation.

1. We have secrecy of process, it is an invisible wave or current, and not the keenest sight or wisdom can penetrate or understand it; it is in fact inscrutable.

2.We have no thought of man’s will in the in mystery of the new birth, but entire independence as to it; it is in fact sovereign.

3.We have set before us distinct evidence in result, illustrated also in the wind; it is in fact in its nature irresistible.

This operation, then, is inscrutable, sovereign, and irresistible.

Let us now just simply state what is wrought in this inscrutable, sovereign, and irresistible operation of the Spirit. It is, in the words of the blessed Lord, a being born again, and “this life is a beginning again of life, of a new source and of a new nature—a life that came from God . . . We receive a new life, which is really Christ Himself in power of life in us, that which Adam innocent had not.”

How blessed, then, this operation. May our hearts take in somewhat more of all that is conveyed through it.

Condensed Notes of an Address, No. 6.

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 7

In our last we were considering the operation of the Spirit known as the new birth—“born of water and the Spirit.” We shall conclude this short series of papers by dwelling upon His blessed work in us. His operation is in the power of life, producing conflict, labor, discoveries of sin, and need of mortifying our members which are upon the earth; and the more all that Christ is is revealed to the soul, the more we find out what we are, and with it the deep need for humiliation before God. It has been well remarked, that “When the fulness and finishedness of our acceptance in Christ is not known, anxiety and spiritual despondency arise, and doubt sometimes issuing in a very mistaken and evil reference to the law—a sort of consecrating the principle of unbelief, putting the soul (on the discovery, by the Spirit, of sin working in it) under the law and its condemnation, and not in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free . . . The Spirit of God judges sin in me; but it makes me know I am not judged for it, because Christ has borne that judgment for me. This is no cloak of licentiousness. The flesh would indeed always turn it to this—it would pervert-everything. But the truth is, that same Spirit which reveals the Lord, who bore my sins, as having purged them, at the right hand of God, and which therefore gives me perfect assurance of their being put away, and the infiniteness of my acceptance in Him—that same Spirit, I say, judges the sin by virtue of its character as seen in the light of that very glory; and when this is not done, the Father, into whose hands the Son has committed those whom the Father has given Him to keep, as a holy Father chastises, and corrects, and purges as a husbandman the branches.”

Now in John 3, 4, and 7, we find the blessed Spirit set before us, as is said, in His characteristic living operations, and the three chapters stand thus:

1. Chapter 3—He quickens, gives life.

2. Chapter 4—He is as given, a well of water In us, springing up into everlasting life; connected with this, we have grace and riches in their fulness, knowledge of the Father as seeking worshipers to worship the God of love in spirit and in truth.

3. In chapter 7, the blessed Spirit is spoken if as flowing forth from us, “rivers of living water”—heavenly refreshings indeed, connected, too, with His glory as Son of man glorified; and along with this we have the earnest of glory, the power of refreshing, as well as the blessed testimony that man in Him prevails and has the glory; though yet he must needs be an expectant till He Himself is manifested to the world, then in its true order in that feast of tabernacles.

There is one point of great moment, to which I would earnestly call your attention, namely, the individual nature of the blessing; the words of another set this forth so blessedly that I would, while quoting them, adopt them as my own:

“He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ Here again you will remark, it is an individual matter—the believer’s portion, however it may be ministered. ‘This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet (given); because that Jesus was not yet glorified.’ Now this statement (as I think we shall see) is one of extreme importance, and connected with the whole character and state of the dispensation, except the fact of as being that of God’s blessings, which are beyond all dispensation, giving the Spirit as the power of divine life and worship, inasmuch as they lead into communion with Himself.”

Again, the same writer further says: “I feel it very important to remark here, the individual character noticed before, because it is the saving principle in the midst of desolation and evil, whatever common good it may produce; it is not they shall drink of the river from the rock, or drink of some common river, but ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water,’ it is the personal possession and indwelling of the Holy Ghost. So the Gospel of St. John, which gives what is essential and uniting and not consequences, continually treats it.”

May our hearts more and more delight in Him, the heavenly Operator in us as well as towards the world; if we would seek Him out, it must be by His own gracious help in holy scripture, wherein He is set forth as the Comforter sent by the Father and the Son.

Condensed Notes of an Address, No. 7

“a Child Is Born” - “the Mighty God” . . . “Emmanuel”

(Isa. 9; Matt. 2)

It is a very significant fact, that the test of every one and everything is Christ; doctrines do not test in the same way as the Person to whom, no doubt, all the doctrines of scripture relate.

The great question now, as in the days when the Lord Jesus was here, is: “What think ye of Christ?” Thus it is that here where we have the record of His advent into the world, all classes are manifested in their true character in relation to Him. In Matthew He is presented as Son of Abraham, Son of David, Messiah the King; hence it is in this connection all through this gospel we ever find Him, and the presentation of the truths found here are ever set forth in this connection. There was a spot on earth—the place of privilege and blessing—a favored place, the city of the great King. “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Sion.”

Now it was to that spot every eye was turned, wherever expectation was alive in any true heart, it was from thence its hope sprung; hence it is that we find these wise men coming from the far east to Jerusalem, with the language of affection and earnestness saying, “Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.” Thus were their hearts moved by His birth, it is the King of Israel, They come to seek all about Him who has a claim upon them, they leave their own and distant country, guided by His star, if only they can reach Him; this is the first class or company whom His advent into this world brings, as it were, to the front. It is a lovely picture this for faith to look upon. Oh, how Christ can engross heart and mind! Does He command ours? How much would we go through if only we might reach Him? Then observe their attitude on arriving at the place where He was—“they fell down and worshiped him”—

“Jesus is worthy to receive
Honor and power divine,”

is in reality the language of their willing hearts; how blessed to see faith at its goal enjoying the prize! Is it not lovely to see how His Person, having won their affections, commanded their adoration and opened their treasures! They had nothing too costly to withhold from Him, precious as were their gifts—“gold, and frankincense, and myrrh”—He was far more precious still. Oh, what a sight for faith, child though He was here, an infant of days as to His humanity, yet He was their all! He had but just come, yet it was Himself who had come and Himself in person was there before them.

It is lovely to trace in the scriptures how His Person ever addressed the faith and affection of which He was the object; here it was in the first moments of His birth; later on, as we know, in the close of His days on earth and in the face of the hostility and hatred which beset Him, there was found a Mary, who would expend on Him what the Holy Ghost was pleased to call “very costly,” and as she placed it on His body, perfumed the house with its odor. Oh, how at the beginning and at the end Christ was all to faith, whether in the Magi or in a Mary, it found in Him its satisfying portion, and the hatred and violence which marked both the scenes to which we have called attention, could not hinder it in its devotion and affection to Him. Is it so, may I ask, affectionately, with us?

I would not leave this beautiful scene without a word on another subject—truly the center of all we have had before us. Let me ask you to think who is this wonderful Child, whose advent seems to touch and test all hearts? Who but Emmanuel, God with us! He was none less than God manifest in flesh; the mighty God was there. Oh, what grace and love, that He who was “in the beginning with God,” was God, should thus come down to become Man! Most affecting it is to dwell in thought on circumstances in which He is here found as having become man: a little child, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and laid in a manger—lowliness, poverty, and rejection are all found in His birth: well may we sing—

“Rich in glory, Thou didst stoop,
Thence is all Thy people’s hope;
Thou wast poor, that we might be
Rich in glory, Lord, with Thee.”

Again, it is striking to note how from the first moment of His advent He was a sufferer; in different ways and at different times He was such. Oh, how it does appeal to and attract the heart! It is a suffering and sorrowing Christ which does this; in His humiliation He wins, in His glory He satisfies; His humiliation and His glory are the two great powers which work upon our hearts. Then see how Israel suffers too in connection with Him. “In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” Oh, what an expression of suffering and death, “they are not”! What a sense of desolation these words carry with them!

Thus we have looked at, in this first class, the faith and affection which found its all in Himself, and expended it all on Him, and we have also looked at who He was, the Object of such faith and love.

We must now look at the second class we find here, whom His Person and presence bring out. We find then a striking contrast to the Magi in the king (Herod) and all Jerusalem with him; Herod is a sad character, full of pride, vanity, and worldly lust; besides he is a foreign king, who is here seen usurping the allegiance of Messiah’s people, while He the true King, owned by the Gentiles, as represented by those wise men, is cast out and refused, His own people being entirely indifferent to Him. Oh, what a sight is here presented in the distress and trouble which His advent brought upon Herod and all Jerusalem! I need hardly dwell upon the moral state here presented. May I ask you how far you suppose things and people now are changed? Is there any more heart now than then for Christ? Alas! the answer is but too distinctly stamped upon the vast scene of profession around, where there is no more room for Jesus now than on the morning of His birth.

But suffer me to bring this question nearer to our own doors, and to ask how it is with us in relation to Him? Another has so truly said, that what marked the man who then had possession of the throne of Jerusalem was “victorious love of the world.” Now how far are we free from a like influence? Is it not this we have to watch against on every side? Oh, the inroads and encroachments it has made in our midst! We are looking at a moment when Christ was “an exile in Egypt, and then a Nazarene in the earth”; what is He now, may I ask? And what are we in relation to Him and as His disciples in this world that thus hated and rejected Him, and that hates and rejects Him still? Oh, be assured this is the question of questions, now as then Christ determines everything. How much there is in that name Emmanuel, and what power there is in it to set aside present things: these are surely some of the thoughts the Holy Ghost would press on our souls as we dwell upon this precious page in His history upon earth.

But there is another class represented here, to which I would earnestly call your attention for a little. These scribes are a miserable company; they were conversant with the prophetic scriptures which told of Messiah’s birth, when appealed to, they reply at once; but having said this we have said all: information they had, but no more; they could tell of His coming, who was Jehovah’s Shepherd-King, to come out of Bethlehem, the house of bread but their hearts had no interest whatever in Himself.

Oh, what a picture of a heart unmoved were they, no cravings, and longings, and yearnings were theirs, which nothing and no one but Jesus could meet and satisfy; no desire to see or hear this wondrous stranger-child had they; if they wished for a reputation for clearness as to the prophetic word, it was theirs; if they desired to make capital out of their knowledge of the sacred writings, none could dispute their claims; but no more than this could be said of them, “like lifeless finger-boards they point along a road in which they neither lead nor follow”; the place of the birth of Jesus, and the character of Him who was coming, they can announce, and then settle down into an indifference in which Christ is unnoticed and unknown. Alas these scribes of other days are but the prototypes and precursors of those of a like class in this day—hearts where there is neither welcome nor room for Christ, any more than in the inn at Bethlehem.

Oh, how all this speaks to our hearts this day! I press it earnestly upon every conscience and heart; let us each take it to ourselves as to how we stand in respect to Christ, What is He to us? What is He worth? These and suchlike as to Himself are the questions of the moment.

There is one word of very deep and precious blessedness in the first chapter of this gospel, and having looked at it a little we shall close our meditations for the present. The word to which I refer is “Emmanuel,” which being interpreted is, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). What an announcement for any who had heart for it is in such words; and what an unfolding of the heart of God, too! Oh, the living grace that would indeed come down and tabernacle among men, so that they should know in very truth, “God with us”; and not only this, but God among men in the circumstances we have already had before us, and meeting with such a reception at their hands, coming to His own and His own receiving Him not. Oh, what grace and goodness! Then again, think of the power of that name, Emmanuel, think of its attractive power, think of its displacing power, has it such with us? We who know it now in all the endearment which the name of Jesus brings with it to our poor hearts? If indeed we have heard His blessed voice, is He not able and worthy to make room for Himself, whoever and whatever else would have to stand aside? May the Lord, by His Spirit, so endear Christ to each one, that nothing else will be of any value comparatively in our eyes, that our testimony in word and act to Him, the true wisdom may be thus expressed.

“It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, and the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.”

“Nevertheless God”

“No rest” . . . Troubled on every side; without fightings, within fears. Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down” (2 Cor. 7:5,6).

These words might be well ruled out of season in this self- sufficient, boastful day. That they are so in fact, if not in terms, is more than evident to all whose eyes are opened and anointed.

One thing is clear enough, the apostle, blessed, man, was not like some who are not apostles. But then, it is true, modern ideas and scriptural revelation are in direct antagonism. Paul was not the man who carried everything before him, applauded and made much of by those who are led by wisdom of words, excellency of speech, or intellectual prowess; on the contrary, weakness, fear, and much trembling marked him. It is an immense comfort, in the inward storms and conflicts of the heart, to be able to say, “Nevertheless God.” Oh, what a divine solace there is in Him, now made known to us in Christ. Not only our Father, but “the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.” Whatever of mercy is needed for His poor servant, our God is the Author of it. The connection of Father with mercy here, as with glory elsewhere, is very blessed; whatever of comfort, the heart oppressed in the cloudy and dark day, longs for, is all treasured up in God Himself, He is the God of all encouragement (B"D"68ºF,äH); the thought of strengthening is involved in the word, because properly it is the act of calling some one to our side to aid us.

It is both interesting and comforting to the heart to see that in the first chapter of this epistle the apostle begins with the source of all cheer and solace, while in the verses we are considering he turns from the no rest of his spirit, the fightings without and fears within, to God Himself in those words, “Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down.” The words “cast down” are expressed in the original by one word, which means, being made low (J"B,4<@ßH); for this use of it see Luke 3:5. There was only One who had un-measured trouble and sorrow here, the blessed, precious Lord; to us all is measured out, either God-given or God-permitted sorrow. Our Father and God knows exactly what His poor vessels are able to bear, all goes on under His hand; while passing through the fire or through the water, He is no uninterested looker-on, be assured.

Dear reader, is the night long and dark with us? Do the floods of adversity and trial lift up their voice and waves? Look up, hope, and wait. Let us assure our hearts He is near us, and sees us, it may be, toiling in rowing against contrary winds and tide. (See Mark 6:48) Let us remember the darkest part of the night is not only that which is near the dawn of day, but it is then that He cometh unto us walking upon the very elements that we dread, then it is that immediately He talks with us and says, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.”

May we take courage from all this, and even though our case be described in the words, “No rest,” “troubled on every side,” “without fightings,” “within fears,” still there is “Nevertheless God.”

“We Beheld His Glory”

It is blessed beyond all expression to remember that the servants of God, as well as the great apostle of the Gentiles, are not only “ministers of Christ,” but also “stewards of the mysteries of God,” and as stewards our great delight should be to keep incorrupt and inviolate the precious peculiarities of divine revelation. The mind and reason of man will no doubt not only refuse them, but in the absence of affection, will speculate in the region of notions and theories. It has been very beautifully remarked that “The guardianship and witness of the personal glory of the Son of God is a chief part of this high and holy stewardship.”

A mere journeying from Egypt to Canaan would not have constituted true pilgrimage. Many a one had traveled that road without being a stranger and a pilgrim with God. Nay, though the journey were attended with all the trials and inconveniences of such an arid, unsheltered, and trackless wild, it would not have been divine or heavenly pilgrimage. A merely toilsome, self-denying life, even though endured with that courage which becomes God’s stranger on earth, will not do. In order to make that journey the journey of God’s Israel, the ark must be in their company, borne by a people ransomed by blood out of Egypt, and tending in their faith of a promise to Canaan.

“This was the business of Israel in the desert. They had to conduct the ark, to accompany it, to guard and hallow it. They might betray their weakness and incur chastening, and dis- cipline in many a way and on many an occasion; but if their direct business were given up, all was gone. And this did come to pass. The tabernacle of Moloch was taken up, and the star of Remphan; and this was despite of the ark of Jehovah; and the camp had therefore their road turned away from Canaan to Babylon or Damascus” (Amos 5; Acts 7).

Assuredly, beloved reader, what the ark was to Israel, the name and Person of the Son of God is to us, the very mystery committed to His people today.

It has often been observed in how many different respects He is called the Son of God; as born of the Virgin (see Luke 1:35); as in resurrection. (See Acts 13:33.) “He is the Son, and yet has obtained the name of Son (Heb. 1:1-3). Matthew and Mark first notice this sonship of God at His baptism. Luke goes further back and notices it at His birth. But John goes further back still, even to the immeasurable, unspeakable distance of eternity, and declares His sonship in the bosom of the Father.” The same writer adds what will surely find a responsive echo in every heart that truly loves Him.

“We must not, beloved, touch this precious mystery. We should fear to dim the light of that love in which our souls are invited to walk on their way to heaven.” Oh, that all His own might better learn and know the manner of the reverence that our God and Father delights to see given to Him who is His beloved Son, in whom is all His good pleasure. May we not say that if there be absent from us that adoring, worshiping affection, which is due to His Person and glory, we are antagonistic to the great object for which the Comforter has come, even as the blessed Lord Jesus Himself said, “He shall glorify me.”

It has been blessedly said by another in words which one’s heart gladly adopts as its own “In the form of God He was God indeed; in the form of a servant He was a servant indeed. He ‘thought it not robbery to be equal with God,’ exercising all the divine rights and using all the divine treasure and resources with full authority; and yet making Himself of no reputation, emptying Himself and being obedient. This tells the secret.”

“All that appears in the history is interpreted by the mystery. It is as the glory in the cloud again. The companion of the camp, in all its afflictions, afflicted was the Lord of the camp.”

How blessed to think of Him in this way, to dwell upon the preciousness of Him in whom we see the veiled glory all through all His lowly life here on earth, to honor, worship, adore Him.

I would in conclusion quote the beautiful words of another, who has long since gone to be with Himself for ever: “His glorious meetness (to use very much the language of another) for all the acts and duties of His mediatory office is resolved into the union of His two natures in the same Person. He who was conceived and born of the Virgin was Immanuel, that is, God was manifest in the flesh: ‘To us a child is born, to us a son is given: . . . and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.’ The One who spake to the Jews, and as a man was then only a little more than thirty years old, was before Abraham (John 8), the perfect and complete work of Christ in every act of His office, in all that He did, in all that He suffered, in all that He continueth to do is the act and work of His whole Person. This is the mystery. Faith apprehends it in the full certainty of the soul.”

I would here add another word, in view of rightly distinguishing between His Person as God and Man, and office, which in various aspects He was pleased to undertake. His subjection, it has been well said, is that of office, the subjection of Him who had all things put under Him to Him who did put all things under Him. “It is the mystery of mysteries, the Person we are here looking at. When we think rightly of Him, even all the brightness of the coming kingdom will be seen but as a veil. Can the splendor of the throne display Him? Would not the honors of Solomon, yea, of all the kingdoms of the world, be a veil over the glory of the Son, as really as the scorn of Pilate’s judgment-hall, or the thorns of Calvary? Is the Bethlehemite the measure of His personal worth, a single tittle more than the Nazarene? Therefore to faith it is easy to see the servant still, in days of exaltation as in days of sorrow. He served as servant, He serves as a Priest, He will serve as a King.”

With all our hearts we say –

“O Lord, we adore Thee,
For Thou art the slain One,
That livest for ever,
Enthroned in heaven!”

The Cross, the Grave and the Glory

How blessed to have found in the cross and grave of the Lord Jesus, the burial place of all one’s sinful doubts and fears; but more blessed still is it to look up and see the bright morning of our hopes, beyond the possibility of a cloud. The glory of the Father, came down to the very spot where the blessed One, our own precious Lord and Master lay in death, that death too wherein God was perfectly glorified, and “Set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.” Now how blessed for us to learn power in that redemption and resurrection of Christ our Lord, and also to see in them the very expression and model of the action of the same power working in us, to put us in association with Him where He is, that we may have part in the glory of this same precious Lord and Master. Oh, how near to each other have death, the grave and glory come in all that He passed through and has now gone into; how blessed to think of Him on high, the man who is worthy; we never get that in the Old Testament; to Abraham, the father of the faithful, God was Almighty, and he was blessed, Solomon too was in his day in a wonderful way endowed, but in Christ God has found a man who is worthy, who has prevailed, who has a claim. May the hearts of all who love Him and know His love, find their increasing comfort and rest in Himself, amid all the wild storms that sweep over time’s pathway, may His peace (“my peace”) ever rule in their hearts.

Finally

This word, used by the great apostle of the Gentiles five times in his letters, is suggestive in its connections of the close of another year, and of the termination with it of the writer’s service in connection with this serial.

The word, as it stands by itself alone, outside of all connections, is a sad one as we use it in ordinary conversation: it indicates the end and wind up and finish of things here, all this belongs to that which is seen, to that which is temporal and fading away; it speaks of change and decay in all around, the dying year is the ‘finally’ of 1895; how blessed to know we are thus far nearer to that bright and blessed moment when His shout of relationship (6,8,bF:") will put in motion by His word all His own, living or sleeping in the tomb, so that raised or changed they rise to meet Him and to be with Him for ever. Thank God, there will be no finish to the rest and blessedness of that.

Let us just look at each of the five passages where we do find this valedictory exhortation.

1. Eph. 6:10: “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord.” This exhortation is in its own appropriate place where fighting is in question; you will find the same exhortation to being strong in the Lord in the Book of Joshua, spoken to him, too, by Jehovah Himself—it was not spoken to any other man in the history of Israel; they were then in the very circumstances to have it addressed to Joshua: they were on the eve of taking possession of that which was then possessed by the enemy’s gods. Further, that in which their strength alone could lie is very blessedly expressed in the words, “in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

2. The second passage in moral order, too, as I judge, is Phil. 4:8. Here it is the power of the heart being occupied with good, the Lord knows the terrible tendency of our poor hearts to be occupied with evil, hence the apostle’s exhortation. It is very blessed to have the habit of living in what is good in this world, where we are constantly compelled to have to do with what is evil, to have the heart toned and tuned to take delight in those things that God delights in. Further, you will notice here that this walk in the delight of heart in what is good, is in the power of the life of Christ given, and the flesh reckoned dead; another has said: “If I look to walk after Christ, I must reckon myself dead. I never say I must die, because this would be to suppose the flesh there working; of course it is there, but I say it is dead . . . The spring from which all power is, that you have died.”

3. If you turn to 2 Thess. 3:1, you will find the third instance of the use of this word in another connection. “Finally, brethren, pray for us” Here it is the desire of the apostle’s soul to be upheld by the prayers of the Thessalonian Christians; it supposes their habit of dependence on God, by which he longed to be sustained in his ministry; it is very sweet to see here the expression on the one hand of confidence in God, in seeking to be thus remembered by them before Himself; and on the other; the confidence of his heart in their love and affection. “Finally, brethren, pray for us.”

4. This instance is in Phil. 3:1, it is “Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.” It is such a suited termination of an epistle, where the word joy (P"D"), in many variations of the word, is continually found. This is made all the more striking

when we remember that the letter is from prison, so that every external circumstance which could in any way be supposed to contribute to this blessed servant of Christ in his exile was excluded; there was nothing in the prison walls of Nero’s dungeon to minister to his joy; but there are three little words here which reveal the secret and explain the word alway in chapter 4:4: these are golden words, may we take them in and prove their blessedness and power—“in the Lord”—here is an unfailing and unchanging ground of comfort and delight, here are no clouds or shadows, here it is all clear shining of the sun. Dear reader, may we know and enter into it.

5. The last instance is 2 Cor. 13:11. Here it is what we may call purely valedictory, his loving farewell (P"\D,J,) “Finally, brethren, rejoice.” This is one of the foremost among those described in Gal. 5:22, as fruit of the Spirit; but he says further, “be perfect”—the meaning of this is the fitting together as the pieces in a mosaic (6"J"DJ\.,F2,); but there is more, “be of good comfort.” This is as in the midst of many dangers, temptations, and sorrows around them. Alas! there is on every side abundance to cast down and overwhelm the spirit, how blessed to find even the smallest encouragement

(for that is the force of the word B"D"6"8XT) in the sense that there is one who is called to your side, and is on your behalf and for you through it all. Oh, that we may rejoice in all the blessed consolation this imparts. Further, he says, “be of one mind”—“that is, think the same thing (JÎ "ßJÎ ND@<,ÃJ,). What an exhortation! And who but the blessed Spirit of God, in ungrieved power in the souls of His own, could bring about such sameness of mind and heart amid the endless contrarieties and divergence of thought and view existing at this time.

Once more mark his words, “live in peace”—that is, let peace be the atmosphere of your life. It is well to remember that peace without with others flows from peace within; it is thus that we are sandaled as to our feet. May it be so with all who read these words. Lastly, note the promise, “and the God of love and peace shall be with you.” His companionship and presence are thus pledged all along the way.

The Lord grant to all my readers a very distinct sense of such blessed help and stay, for Christ’s sake. “Finally, brethren, farewell.”

“Stand Fast,” “Hold,” “Himself”

2 Thess. 2:15, 16

We are rapidly nearing the wind up of the last days, and the tendency of the moment is to remove from under our feet the foundations of truth. There is nothing that the enemy has not assailed in his supreme hatred of Christ, thank God, he has not in the most remote degree touched anything in this assault; the truth abides and shines even more brightly when the din of the attack is over; there is never any fear as to the faith, the danger lies in the direction of our not standing fast as to it, of our not having our feet, as it were, firmly fixed upon that firm foundation of God which abides. In the case of the Thessalonian believers, to whom the epistle was written, the words derive special force in connection with what had been spoken of in verses 11, 12, concerning the Antichrist—the “lie”—in which all previous delusions of Satan are consummated in view of his coming, the Holy Ghost through the apostle says, stand firm.

Again, he also says, “hold fast.” The great aim of the enemy is to induce us to surrender, whatever may be the plea or pretext; these are various and most skillfully adjusted to the particular time and occasion; the devil’s great effort is to seduce God’s people to let go what they have, for something supposed to be far superior; “clearer light” and “advanced truth” are, alas! too often the bait that cover his hook. Oh, may we be on our guard, watchful, not ignorant of his service, and seeking grace and strength from Him persistently to hold fast.

It is interesting to note that here, as well as in 1Cor. 15:58; Col. 1:23, hope is the great incentive to steadfastness.

The last word which heads this paper is the sweetest and most precious to the heart that has known and believed His love; that word carries with it all the blessedness of a Person who is worthy to entwine all the affections of His people’s hearts—“Himself.” Ah, how well we know there is no other than He, Himself, “Jesus himself,” “Himself the Lord.” There is no coldness or distance in that unfolding, it is a revelation to the heart of a Person such as the heart alone can appreciate with delight. Yes, thank God, “Christ IS all things.”

That which adds to the tenderness of these words is the use the blessed Lord made of what is so connected with His own Person in His converse with His disciples, both during His blessed life on earth as well as after His resurrection; for instance, how comforting and soothing it must have been to the sorrow-stricken hearts of the poor disciples, to hear Him say to them in John 14:3: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself.” Was not that just the very balm for their grief at that moment? How well we can conceive that one of the pangs that pierced their hearts at that moment were such questions as these, that would rise continually. Would they ever see Him again? Would that blessed intercourse of three years be ever resumed? Would there be recognition and association in the new and unknown world into which He was about to depart from them? They did not know where He was going: “Lord, we know not whither thou goest”; “Lord, whither goest thou?” These words tell the secret of the cloud that spread its cold damp over their broken hearts. He Himself, and He alone, knew how to meet that, and hence He says that if He went away, He would come again and take (B"D"8ZR@:"4) them to Himself—the very word for that moment for them was just that—“MYSELF.” Oh, how it would not fail to distill its own healing, soothing cheer; He would come again and take them to Himself. Observe the word rendered receive is really take, it is B"D"8ZR@:"4 from two Greek words, meaning ‘to take near with,’ or ‘to one’s self.’

It implies He would take them into all the nearness and affection of His own blessed Person. Further, observe what He says later on in this chapter as to manifesting Himself. To the faithful, dependent one He says, “I will manifest myself to him.” I dare not say a word as to my poor apprehension of all that is implied in that one blessed word, “manifest”; but I believe that it conveys this, that in manifestation all is gone but Christ Himself. Oh, how blessed that would be; the heart conscious of nothing but Himself. But after His great atoning work was finished and He was risen from the dead, we find the same thing. In Luke 24:39 we hear Him reassuring His poor disciples in these words: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.” How blessed to see Him in resurrection thus assuring His poor, timid, trembling ones in those blessed words, “it is myself”; so that before He departed out of this world to the Father, He tells His sorrowing ones that He would come again and receive them unto Himself; then having died and risen again from the dead, He stills their fears by pointing to Himself, and now while the church is still expectant, and His own who are devoted to Him in His absence eagerly look for the bright morning to dawn, the blessed Spirit announces the consummation of all true expectancy in these words: “Himself the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord”—Himself (1Thess. 4:16, 17).

“Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God even our Father, which hath loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work.”

From Helps in Things Concerning Himself: Volume 5 (1895)

Table of Contents

The Person and Offices of the Spirit No. 1

“Thou Remainest . . . Thou Art the Same”

Mark 7

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 2

Mark 8 Dalmanutha

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 3

Bethsaida

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 4

“the Holy Mount”

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 5

“Bring Him Unto Me”

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 6

The Person and Office of the Spirit No. 7

“a Child Is Born” - “the Mighty God” . . . “Emmanuel”

“Nevertheless God”

“We Beheld His Glory”

The Cross, the Grave and the Glory

Finally

“Stand Fast,” “Hold,” “Himself”