THE subject we had on the previous evening was the present great revival of truth-the way in which the Lord has led back His people to the knowledge -of His mind as they had it at the beginning; so that, in fact, as some one expressed it lately when speaking on this subject," extremes meet." We have had to go back to the first start of that which has since grown into an immense thing; we have had, as it were, to cancel " the mustard tree," while the Lord conducts us back to the bud of it-to the twenty-fourth of Luke 1 do not believe that any true soul has reached this point without having gone through a similar exercise to that of those we find in that chapter; taught by the Lord, he has reached the point where he discovers, not his salvation,, but his relation to Christ and Christ's to him. He, as we saw, first opens to them the Scriptures, is next known to them in the breaking of bread, and lastly stands in their midst. I fear some have taken their place in the third, who have never known the second. But this church order was almost immediately lost, because the central point, Himself, was lost. To Ephesus He says: " Because thou hast left thy first love.... I will remove thy candlestick out of his place except thou repent; " I will take away the power and ability to set forth light to others. And now, when ruin is irretrievable, He has brought in this revival. It is the most wonderful thing. Here we are amidst the debris of everything, and He says, I will bring you out again, though not in the illustrious and distinguished character that you bore at the beginning. I must take things up again where I fell off, just as Abram went back to where his altar was " at the first." And it is most exhilarating to the heart to know that the Lord takes the very same pains with me as He did with His disciples at the first. I trust now that it is simple to you the fact of your relationship to Him that of the body, united to Him and one another-and that this is the true place of His people. Having seen this, I come to a second point: it is not everything that truth is recovered. As I heard it quaintly said, Ezra built the temple-recovered the truth-but Nehemiah built the walls to preserve it; and this thought suits me as 'an illustration of what I mean. There has been the recovery, but now the thing is to preserve it.
What, then is the nature of this preservation? There is a little word in the second of Timothy that will help us if we turn to it. It is: " Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me." The word translated in our version as " form" would be better rendered by " outline."
Now notice that he does not say " hold fast the sound words," nor does he say "which form I gave you." I hope you understand the difference. He wants them to get hold of not only the words, but of the scope of them. It was the outline they were to keep. The words, he says, you got from me, but haVe you got a certain knowledge of the form, of the outline, of the scope of them?
And this is of great importance. You will find. that every failure and defalcation of the people of God has been marked by this-that they have lost sight of the scope of the word that God has given them. I find that Satan often comes in and upsets a soul about a word, but I say, I am not going to stand about a word; I know what the scope of the whole thing means. Just as one would say to a child, You have not taken in my meaning; so you will find at any time that failure arises when you lose the sense of the scope of the words.
I will take just one or two examples to bring out what I mean, before going on to show how a soul being occupied with Christ learns -what will suit him. In Eden, Satan occupies Eve with the penalty for eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and deceives her as to the nature of the penalty. She loses the positive meaning and scope of the word, led away and diverted from it under the impression that she will not suffer for going contrary to it.
Noah might plead that he was not forbidden to plant a vineyard-that there was no word of God interdicting it; but, if he had kept to the form or scope of the word given to him, he would soon have seen that if, he in any measure relaxed the reins of power he would forfeit the position to which he was called.
Again in Gen, 33., I find Jacob returned to the land, and in that sense a revival; he had learned the power of God at the night of wrestling, having re-entered the land where his fathers had " sojourned as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles." But he loses the scope of God's word, he settles down in the land. " He bought a parcel of a field, where he had spread his tent, at the hand of the children of Hamor, Shechem's father." He might say the word of God had not forbidden him to do it, and there was no harm in it, but he was called out to be a pilgrim, and he now had lost that character. Oh! but I am a pious man, he might say, I have my altar. I do not give up the light and the truth that I have! True, but you have given up the form of the word, you have given up the great outline of your calling. God brought you back to set forth the fact that you are a pilgrim and a stranger here.
It is an immense thing practically. Even all learning amongst men consists in being able accurately to distinguish one thing from another. I say I know the size and the shape of two things, and I can distinguish the one of them from the other, though there be but little difference between them. Any one can distinguish between two things that are very different. I remember hearing of a learned professor who mistook a very small bird for a large one because it had identically the same colored feathers in its wings. In appearance it was so, but he had not an idea of the true form, of the bird.
Thus I often find a man interpreting a passage in a gospel or an epistle, and failing in the interpretation, because he does not know the scope of it. A man does not know the geography, of England because he knows the one county of Middlesex; he must know the scope of, the whole country. " Sound words which you have heard," but the question is, have you got the scope of them? When any one insists on a text for this or that it is evident he is only thinking of Middlesex; but if, he were to leave out Middlesex in his delineation; I, should be able to detect him by the sound words I get the scope; from the whole tenor of the sound words,, but I can detect omission by the sound words themselves. There is Another example in the thirteenth of the first of Chronicles, where David gets a new cart to bring the ark of God home in. He had heard of it being done before by the Philistines; facts were in favor of it; history stood up for it; and there was no text to forbid it; and so he has the cart. And the worst of these things is that they always go well at first; there is no harm in them. And so it goes on all right until the oxen stumble, and then the smash—comes. David was led away by expediency: he did not understand the scope and nature of God's counsel. So we find he has to fight the Philistines who brought the leaven in, and when he has thus cleared himself morally he says: " None ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites." When the world comes in as the Philistines here, the mind of the saint gets clouded as to the counsel of God, and, unless there be very positive interdiction, he cannot see how he trenches on God's ways by adopting a human expedient.
One example in the New Testament. In Gal. 2, Paul takes Titus, a Greek, with, him to Jerusalem, but he would not have him circumcised. He says,, I, will not give way on this point, that the truth of the gospel may continue with you. And after that he adds, Neither will I give way before the old apostle. When Peter came. to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because be was to be blamed; I must stand up for the truth of the gospel, I must keep it up to its full scope, up to the mind of the Lord. If I yield, either in the case of the young disciple or of the old apostle, I shall be giving up the form of sound words.
It is an interesting point to consider. You will find when you come to deal with people, that they have not got the scope of truth at all; they have lost the form. " Form," as I have said, is a very inadequate word; it is really more the delineation of a thing. Nothing makes it so plain to my mind as a map. I must keep the whole thing in my thought, or I get into confusion according to divine order.
And now I come to the second part of my subject for to-night, which is more interesting, and will more touch our hearts.
What, then, is the object of all we have been looking at? It is that, if in the things of man it is so important I should be able to distinguish things as they are-that I should know their true form and size-how much more important is it in the things of God? And in these I must get everything from God Himself. I am entirely dependent upon Him for my knowledge and understanding of His mind. This is why I have read this Psalm, in which I find how, by being in. His presence, I may get what suits Christ. It is: " Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine, ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father's house, so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty."
But, you say, how am I to get into this place? I turn to Matt. 25, to show you how the Lord brings His saints to it. Here the church has lost its hope; it has gone to sleep; there is no activity of life. The Lord comes in and wakens- us up by the simple fact, not of His coming, but by the words, " Behold the Bridegroom; go ye out to meet him " It is not only that I know Him as the Head, but that I am in the sense of the relationship of the Bride. Supposing a person came into this room and announced, " Behold the Bridegroom! " what an effect it would produce! How we should all immediately adopt what we think would suit Him! I am going to meet Him. My waking up to this fact and my going out to meet Him necessarily create in my heart the desire to suit Him. He does not terrify you; he does not threaten judgments on you; but He counts on your heart. The cry is " Behold the Bridegroom! " This at once awakes us, and, as we go to meet Him, the practical effect is, that we seek to be what will suit Him.
I turn next to Rev. 21, where I find the Bride " all glorious within." This book opens with the failure of the vessel of testimony; it is spued out of Christ's mouth; but at the close of the book He lets me into His secrets, His thoughts about His Bride; He discloses to me the very garments in which she will stand before Him-the very Moral condition, which will not only please Himself, but which set forth what they have who are ready for Him. You may say, But we are not- the Bride yet; and I admit that we are not; but still from this picture of the. Bride, I &an 'show' you what will suit the Bridegroom; and I say that I have got a wonderful secret-when I can say, I know what will suit Him.
Here I learn what will suit 'Him. I find in Rev. 21. what the Bride will be when she does suit Him, and I hear of the beauty which pleases Him in the forty-fifth Psalm. " Forget thine own people, and thy father's house; so shall the king-greatly desire thy beauty "—the greatest moral beauty.
In that day, when we shall be like Himself, surely we shall be that which will please Himself. And here He lets 'me know what that is, and if I am going out to meet Him I have already got some of that beauty, and I am not going to adopt anything that will not suit Him This puts me into a peculiar position here. I cannot do what David did; I am not going to have a cart, however useful it may be, for I' have got the form, or scope, of what will suit Rim. 'In the description of the Bride 'we are given seven different things. First: "Having the glory of God; " "Her light like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal;'" I believe this is Christ in humanity. Second: ‘" A will great and 'high "-to keep out everything that does not suit Christ; everyone knows that walls are to keep things out. Third: "'Twelve gates let in everything that does suit Him. The description is so simple that I need not go, 'through it; what I want to dwell upon is the eleventh verse: "Having the glory of God." This is shining on the earth in the gospel of the glory of Christ. It is this that lets us into the secret of our power. Though I admit that it is future, that we have it but partially now, yet we may have it in measure why, else, is it given to us here? If the bridal garments are 'brought home before the bridal day, what is it for, but that they may be tried on? And so, at the end of this book, the Lord allures the heart by showing it the moral nature of that which will suit Him.
But how am I to get it? It is by " having. the glory of God " I see what will suit. Him. With unveiled face, beholding the glory of the' Lord, we are changed into the " same image from glory to glory." Christ is in glory, and I must be in it too, in spirit, before I can have it, 1, and then I am transformed; and I thank the Lord that, though I may have but very little of Rev. 21 about me, yet I do know what suits Him; and I can tell others what that great' moral costume is, and that the church will come out soon in all the divine beauty that I see here, and be the exhibition to the earth of the second Man, of whom it is said that, " if all—the things which he did should be written every one, even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written; " and thus be "the fullness of him that filleth all in all."
But I may look round and see very little of these bridal garments!-Still, I say, I will not have anything else.-But I shall look so little-7 so nothing in the eyes of men! I shall have but very little clothing!-Better have only one stitch of the "raiment of needlework," than the most beautiful broadcloth that was ever woven! I do not want to be anything in the eyes of men; I am going to meet the Bridegroom, and I want to suit Him; and, as has been said, " when we are in our true position we are not a testimony to our greatness, but to our weakness."
Now you never can become suitable to Christ but by being in His company. It is the bridegroom that makes the bride; and you must acquire from Himself what best suits Himself. As I may say, it is company that teaches manners. If you are not in His company you may read the Scriptures as much as you like, be able to describe to me from them dispensations and so on, but it will all end in affectation, and not in Christ's ways. I want you to 'accustom yourself to being in the presence of Christ; and the effect of that presence is to demand the entire removal of everything that is not of Him. There I am with Him in a scene where nothing can interrupt my communion with Him. It was in the glory that the ten commandments were written upon the tables of stone; and it is in the glory only that Christ can be written upon the heart. And the reason we see so little of it in people is that they have been so little beholding the glory of Christ. This was just what made the difference between Martha and Mary. Martha was occupied with the human good thing; Mary was learning, by being in company with Himself, what suited Him. Children are often very like their parents, because they keep their company so much; and that is just the principle.
What I look for is that we may practically so get the sense of this, that we may really know what suits Him. If I want to know whether such a thing suits the Lord, and I have to acknowledge that I do not know, the reason is that I have never been near enough to Him to get His mind about it. And I may always get it, if only go to Him for it, for I believe the Lord is always to 'me in the aspect that suits 'me at the moment. If it were not so, He would be indifferent to me. I have to do with that blessed One where He is; and, as I am in association with Him, I become identified with Him in the circumstances in which I am placed, so that I am able to act in them, in a measure, as He would have done.. Is there a storm? I shall be quiet in it. But if I am not with Him, it will only be, a legal effort on my part; it will be my saying that I have power to imitate Christ. It Is, only. as I am with Himself that He gives me power from Himself to be that which is suitable to Him. All the Scripture in the world will not make me able to be what I ought to be without the grace of Christ. And therefore being in His presence is the first thing that is marked in this marvelous unfolding, which I cannot but regard as the most wonderful thing for the Lord to put before us—this picture of what the church will yet be in this' world, where now she is only a failure and a disgrace.
May the Lord teach us to learn what suits Him, and give us grace not to accept of any-.thing, no matter what it be, that does not suit Him. I may appear very insignificant in. the eyes of man; I may have uncommon little of the Bride's garments; I say, I value nothing but what suits Christ; and I would rather have but one stitch of the, raiment of needlework and remember it is tapestry-work, done stitch by stitch-than the finest manufactured garment that man ever saw. I am going out to meet Him, and, if I have the real, Bride affection in my heart, I can think of nothing but what will suit Him. I quite admit how little I may have of what does; but, let me say, anyhow I have the form, and I will not give it up, neither will I take any substitute for it.
(A. W. W.)