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THE

LIFE OF FAITH.

VOL. V.

JULY, 1883.

FOLLOWING up the remarks in our last issue on the subject of the Fulness of the Spirit, we propose now to consider more in detail how this blessing is to be realised.

The question of all others on the minds of those who read these pages is, "How may I have the fulness of the Holy Ghost?" and, "How may I be kept full?"

We pointed out the distinction between the habitual condition indicated by the phrase, "full of (the) Holy Ghost," and the momentary supply for special need expressed by the term "filled." To be "full" of the Holy Ghost is a condition of soul which should characterise every child of God, at all times and in all circumstances. It is not a privilege that belongs only to a favoured few; nor is it something to be expected only at certain seasons and under peculiar circumstances.

The normal condition of the believer may be illustrated by a vessel filled with water to the brim. This does not render him self-satisfied, or independent of further supplies. On the contrary, to be thus "full," is to be conscious of one's own utter insufficiency, and the necessity of God's sustaining and renewing grace moment by moment. It is the soul that is "full of the Holy Ghost" who really looks up, and trusts with childlike simplicity, for the momentary supply. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves."

These "fillings" come just when God sees they are needed. And then it is that the soul, already full, overflows with those "rivers of

[No. 55.

living water," which our Lord referred to as characteristic of Pentecostal days.

But the experience of so many of God's children is often sadly different. Whilst they may know what it is at certain times to receive the fulness, and for a season to be "full of the Holy Ghost," so great and subtle is the spiritual leakage, that too commonly it is not long before they relapse into a condition of emptiness which renders them unfit for the Master's use. Though special service may be met by special supplies, they no longer overflow, because the high water mark of their spiritual life is far below the level even of their own capacity.

Now what is needed is, first to be made full, and then to abide in the fulness of the Holy Ghost.

This blessing is ordinarily realised in connection with three things-Waiting, Desiring, and Receiving.

Waiting.-We would not say that the fulness of the Spirit can be known only after a season of waiting. For we have it recorded in (Acts x. 44), that "while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." There had been no tarrying for this special gift-no definite expectation had been awakened-but suddenly, whilst they listened to the Gospel message, they were endued with the Holy Ghost. That St. Peter recognised the blessing as identical with that which the Apostles themselves received at Pentecost, we learn from the 47th verse, "Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptised, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?"

Still, we know one of the divinely appointed

means by which our spiritual strength is renewed is waiting on the Lord.

We have to wait, not because He is not ready to bless-He waits to be gracious-but in order that we may be made ready to receive His blessing.

An essential condition of all spiritual progress and power is soul-rest. The believer must know what it is to enter into God's rest, if he would be filled with His Spirit. This is one of the chief purposes of waiting. We wait on the Lord rather than for the Lord. And as we wait He prepares the vessel He is about to fill, by bringing it into a state of stillness before Him.

It is a rest that comes from casting all our cares upon Him. If, instead of bringing them to the Lord, laying them upon Him, and leaving them there, we are carrying them, we shall fail to comply with the primary condition of being filled with the Spirit. But if, as we wait on the Lord, we let down our burdens, and lay aside every weight, we then take the first steps that lead to this blessed result.

It is a rest that comes from ceasing from self. This brings us into a still deeper experience of tranquillity. By this means the adjustment of our inner being is brought about. This is to exchange our strength. The Lord Himself, instead of our renewed nature, becomes the centre of our activity. Then it is we learn the true meaning of self-denial, which is to ignore one's self, and to know no other but Christ as the source of our life. "Not I, but Christ liveth in me."

It is a rest that comes from submitting to God in everything. By waiting we get down; we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God; we get under His power-under His control. Then it is that we become like the clay in the hand of the potter. As Luther renders the words in Ps. xxxvii. 7, "Be silent to God and let Him mould thee." Then it is that all self-energy, and eagerness and anxiety, cease, and the whole being is surrendered unreservedly into the hands of God, that He might work in us "that which is well-pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ."

In our next we hope to take up the subject of Desiring and Receiving.

"TRUE IN HIM AND IN YOU."

"A new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth."—1 John ii. 8.

O How wonderful the message,

Far surpassing human thought!
Reaching to the deepest longings
Of the soul divinely taught!
Treading in the blessed footsteps,
Asking "What would Jesus do?"
We may realise, in measure,
"True in Him, and true in you."

Not a sinful child of Adam,
Not a seraph in the sky,
Not a white-robed saint in glory

Would have claimed a joy so high! Yet, fulfilling Love's commandment, (Ever old, yet ever new)

We may hear the Spirit whisper,"True in Him, and true in you.”

O to write the sacred chorus

After every song of praise, As we trace the life of Jesus,

As we muse on all His ways! O to keep the great Exemplar

Ever hopefully in view; Echoing the Spirit's teaching, "True in Him, and true in you!"

Let it nerve for holy conflict,

Nobler victories to prove!
Let it rouse the saints of Jesus
To the dignity of love!
Let it sweeten lowly service,

Sweeten pain and sorrow too,
Let it gild the cross with glory,

“True in Him, and true in you."

Only as by faith we reckon "Self" as 66 dead," and in the grave: Only as by faith we welcome

Christ omnipotent to save: Only as the risen Saviour

Doth our life with His renew, Can the Holy Spirit witness"True in Him, and true in you."

Only in the Lord abiding,

Living in the Love of God, Safely kept and safely sheltered By the ever-cleansing Blood, Faith can claim her glorious portion,

And can sweetly find it true, Darkness past, the Light now shining, True in Him, and true in you."

Blessed Lord, we are not like Thee;
This, O this has been our sin !
But our hearts, through grace, are open,
Enter now, and reign within.
Come and live Thy life within us,

All iniquity; subdue,

Come and seal to us the blessing-
"True in Him, and true in you."
Thine we are, Thou dear Immanuel,

Thine we are, and "not our own;
Now Thy royal rights establish,

Take Thy sceptre, take Thy throne ! More and more Thy blessèd image To our longing souls impart, Till we shall be wholly like Thee, When we see Thee as Thou art!

LUCY A. BENNETT.

ABIDE IN CHRIST, AT THIS MOMENT.-The thought of living moment by moment is of such central import ance-looking at the abiding in Christ from our side-that we want once more to speak of it. And to all who desire to learn the blessed art of living only a moment at a time, we want to say, The way to learn it is to exercise yourself in living in the present moment. Each time your attention is free to occupy itself with the thought of Jesus,-whether it be with time to think and pray, or only for a few passing seconds,―let your first thought be to say, Now, at this moment, I do abide in Jesus. Use such time, not in vain regrets that you have not been abiding fully, or still more hurtful fears that you will not be able to abide, but just at once take the position the Father has given you: "I am in Christ; this is the place God has given me. I accept it; here I rest; I do now abide in Jesus." This is the way to abide continually.-Extract from "Abide in Christ," by Rev. Andrew Murray.

rance.

"WHO TOUCHED ME?"

(LUKE VIII. 45.)

BY REV. E. W. MOORE.

I.

WHY did He ask? Not because He was in ignoHe knew the poor suppliant's story well enough. He knew who she was, and whence she came, and what she sought. But He asked the question notwithstanding. It is one thing for Christ to know about us by virtue of His own Omniscience, quite another for us to tell Him our heart's needs ourselves. Why, then, did He ask? Certainly not because He was displeased. Some might have deemed it a most ill-timed intrusion on this poor woman's part. One cannot help thinking that Jairus's patience must have been sorely tried. Was not his child hanging between life and death? At such times minutes of waiting seem like hours, and here, in the very crisis of his hopes, he was delayed. If we have been caught in a block in the City or kept waiting for a train in some time of urgent need, we can enter into Jairus's feelings as he saw the crowd come to a standstill, and found that the Master was listening to some old woman's tale. But blessed be His name that He did wait! What a loser would the Church have been if He had not waited this day. But why, after all did He ask, "Who touched Me?" The answer is that He wanted to draw special attention to that touch. It was not an ordinary touch. It was not an accidental touch. thought so, and with his usual haste expostulated accordingly, "Master, the multitude throng Thee and press Thee, and sayest Thou who touched Me?" But the Lord was not put off by His blundering disciple. He knew what He was doing. He does not wait on errands of mercy to call attention to accidental touches. Have we ever thought how It is a common these accidental touches are? solemn thing to reflect how many crowd round the Saviour and yet never in any real sense touch Him. We are thankful when we see large congregations. worshipping in the House of God, or when the Lord's table is furnished with guests; but at such times we can never forget that it is not the multitude who throng round the Saviour, but the humble penitent who presses through the crowd to touch Him, who is really blessed.

Peter

Nor was this poor woman's touch what I may call the formalist's touch-the touch of a freezing polite

ness, the holding out of the finger tips to the Saviour, as those do who pay Him the compliment of a visit at church on Sunday morning, and quietly ignore His existence the rest of the week. Do not let anyone suppose that Christ would stop on His errands of mercy for such a touch as that. He knows exactly what it is worth, and will meet it with the silence it deserves.

Nor, again, was this poor woman's touch the tentative touch of the half-hearted soul. There are some who seem to be always experimenting with God; they are ever learning and never able to decide -standing on the brink, but never launching away; or if they make a start it is always with the arrière pensee of retreating if they do not like it. They are like captive balloons, they soar heavenward, but they are not really cast loose from earth after all. They are only making experiments; they have not committed themselves to God, and to His word. Such people can never be blessed. "The doubleminded man is unstable in all His ways." "He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. Let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord " (Jas. i. 6, 7). The touch of the poor woman in the story differed widely from any of these. To understand it we must go back and look at the particulars of her case. Notice:

Lazarus) they were all wrought upon living subjects. The unconverted need life before they can expect health, but Christians, those who have life, need life more abundantly, need freedom from spiritual disease, need health. It may be a difficult thing accurately to define health, whether of soul or body, but everyone who enjoys it knows what it is. It does not mean that we are not liable to disease, it does not mean that there are not in every healthy man even susceptibilities of illness, of which he may not perhaps be aware, but it does mean that while health is preserved there is an actual freedom from disease, the faculties and organs of the body fulfil their office, the appetite is good, the vision keen, the enjoyment of existence real. Life in such circumstances is a delight, and not a weariness. The man is well. This blessing of health was the object of this poor woman's quest. Life she had, but it was a curse and not a blessing. For twelve long years she had dragged out a miserable existence-a living death. It was a life that might, writes one, be almost compared to the lingering doom of Margaret Wilson, one of the Scottish martyrs, staked out at sea, at low tide, in Solway Firth, there compelled to face death by inches, as slowly, but surely, the cruel, crawling tide crept up and up "cold at the foot, cold at the heart, cold at the lips, until at length it darkened overhead," and she was gone, strangled by the relentless surge. So, or almost as sadly, had this poor creature faced the slow, but certain death which preyed upon her, having life, indeed, but living

life, and yet mourn every day their lack of spiritual health? Scarcely can they crawl along the narrow way; every movement pains, and every effort exhausts their feeble strength. Sometimes they scarcely know whether they live at all. Such persons, like the poor woman here, want health, and to them comes an unanswered question: "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why, then is not the hurt of the daughter of my people recovered?"

I. The blessing she sought. All admit that the miracles of Christ are not merely wonders, but signs; and signs not only in being the proof and seals of His Divine Mission, but something more-only to suffer. Are there no Christians who have pictures or shadows of His redemptive work on the souls of men-parables in action, as they have been termed, setting forth in the most vivid and realistic fashion the nature and extent of that "inner work of man's deliverance" from sin which it was the great object of Christ's coming to secure. Viewed in this light, the miracles have a surprising interest, and will be found to repay the most careful examination. Looking at this story as a parable of Christ's healing power on our souls, what do we find? First, undoubtedly that the blessing this woman was seeking was not, as many have seemed to think, from the way they interpret it, life, but health. Rightly understood, the miracles of Christ are far more accurately parables of the work of sanctification than of justification. For with the exception of the three Resurrections from the dead (Jairus's daughter, the widow's son at Nain, and

(To be continued.)

THE eclipses of the sun are seldom without witnesses. If you take yourselves to be the light of the Church, you may well expect that men's eyes should be upon you. If other men may sin with observation, so cannot you. -Baxter, 1615-1691.

CONTENTMENT.

BY REV. J. B. FIGGIS, BRIGHTON.

MEAN BY IT; THE JOY, OR WHAT WE GAIN BY IT; AND
THE SECRET, OR HOW WE COME BY IT.

Dean Vaughan shall define for us the duty, and

"I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be fix the meaning of Contentment. "It is the ready content."-Phil. iv. 11.

Is there not some mistake? Is there not some word omitted? Did not St. Paul (for he was an honest man) really mean to say, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be discontent"? That would be what a great many, perhaps the great majority, of the world would have to say. That is what the poet of the world says for them; "How happens it,"-Horace begins his celebrated satires-"How happens it that no one is contented with that lot which either reflection has given him or circumstance thrown in his way?" You have only to listen to the undertone, the ground-swell, of the waves of life, to discover in men's language their discontent: you have only to look in men's faces, and through them to their hearts, to find in their looks their discontent. Prose and poetry echo it; the world and the Church ring with it. The prevalent feeling of men assuredly is, in whatsoever state they are, there with to be discontent.

acquiescence in that which is and is for us: the not reaching forth to that which is forbidden or denied: the saying, and saying because we feel it in the deep of our soul--This is God's will, and therefore it is my will. This is contentment." The Greek word means self-sufficiency; this you may be sure not in the sense of self-conceit, or anything bordering upon it, but in the sense of being independent of circumstances though absolutely dependent upon God. In this same way Solomon says (almost startlingly)" A good man shall be satisfied from himself" when he means really, though the words sound so different, much the same as Jesus means, when He says of the saved soul, that a well of water shall be in him "springing up into everlasting life." In him but not of him, of course; no more of him than the bubbling well is of the rock. The rock is simply its cistern, often only its channel, and so is man the receptacle or the conduit through which the divine stream flows. He can be satisfied from himself, can be content, i.e., contained, only when, only so far as, God is in him of a truth. I never contemplate this subject of Contentment without recalling what I heard from an aged saint of God. "Attacked with fever on a journey, in a strange place, I went to my room and my Bible, and found 'It is I,' and how it quieted me! If it be Thou, Lord, then it is just the place for me. If Thou wouldst have me die here, then it is just the place I wish to die in." There was contentment, contentment such as St. Paul's.

You see by this what the virtue means, where it is to be found, and that it may be found still.

Yet there was no mistake. Here was a man (and he was not the only man, by a long way, thank God,) in the midst of trials that might have shaken the temper of the firmest, of perils beyond most, of labours more abundant, yet whose calm, deliberate conclusion about the events of life was this-They are all right; whose bark tempest-tossed, and only not a wreck, yet carried her sails gallantly, and was making for port with this legend on the ensign at the prow:-* "It was a matter of great and holy joy to me, that after so long an interval your care on my behalf flourished again. Do not suppose in saying this that I am complaining of want; for I have learned to be content with any lot, whatever it may be. I know how to bear humiliation, and I know also how to bear abundance. Under all circumstances, and in every case, in plenty and in hunger, in abundance. The heaviest demands perhaps are made upon it and in want, I have been initiated in the never-in our sorrows: drip, drip, drip falls the rain, and failing mystery: I possess the true secret of life. the cords shrink and shrink, and at last you hear I can do and bear all things in Christ, who inspires them snap, and find their lifting power gone; at me with strength." least such is the tendency of trouble, and as man is born to it you see at once that if things take their course the world will be filled with bleeding hearts, perhaps broken hearts, and life be made a burden and a blight. How to provide against this is one main object of Contentment. This restful, tranquil

But coming back, coming down if you will, from the heavenly to the homely, I want to say a word. or two about Contentment—THE DUTY, OR WHAT WE

I give the Bishop of Durham's spirited rendering of text and context.

Contentment takes on TWO FORMS, I think, according to the two conditions it has to face. In adversity, CALMNESS: in prosperity, CHEERFULNESS.

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