WHILE I believe that we are called on at the present hour most carefully to weigh the doctrine taught, and tp take our share in the exercise of discipline, there is a present-day occupation for the saints, which few of them seem to be very fully engaged in. There has been ample teaching on the Church, and the coming of the Lord; but what we are called for to our blessed place in. Christ above, and our holy plane in the Spirit below, is not to go round and round in a mill-course of: well known doctrine; but, having got our place and standing, what is now to be our occupation? Is there no thing to be known or done further? Everything. For true Christian life now begins. The Father and the' Son, into whose fellowship we have, been brought, are to be known (see 1 John 1). Place, doctrines, and things cannot satisfy either the mind or heart of the sealed saints of God. What Eph. 4:1313Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Ephesians 4:13), teaches, points out to us our great present occupation to, be the seeking after more of acquaintedness with the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God. We have learned a little of the unity of the faith from St. Paul: but is not the Spirit now pressing into prominence the full-knowledge of the Son of God by St. John? I stand with Peter to learn from his (Paul's) epistles, what Paul teaches (2 Peter 3:15,1615And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; 16As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15‑16)), but must I not also stand with Paul and learn further St. John's teaching of the highest of all truth, the full-knowledge of the Son of God, leading on to. God in His nature, personality and relationships? This is, I think, the occupation for the present moment,, in the mind of the Spirit: a very different thing from pottering at a variety of worn-out ecclesiastical odds and ends, and living at the level of the zealous ecclesiastic.
I write thus, dear brother, that you may, by getting this higher occupation, be delivered from your present occupation and bondage: for divine deliverance is what is needed in such cases. The Lord will enable you to throw all unprofitable discipline-engrossment clean out of your mind if you only ask Him. Making it an object it becomes a distinct " snare of the devil," set cunningly by him as " an angel of light," and the willing captive is held as by the very authority of Christ Himself, thinking he is bound by faithfulness to Him to make this his sole occupation! One never knows how deep he is in a pit until he tries to get out.