THERE has been in our day a blessed action of God's Spirit for the glory of Christ and the blessing of God's saints, bringing them into a state conformable to the greatness and glory of the testimony the Spirit is carrying on for the honor of His risen and exalted Son. There has been a divine energy of the Spirit in the ministry of the Word which has gathered out a mass of souls professedly to Christ and the things above, " Where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God," but wherever there is any extraordinary work of God it not only acts upon those who are its proper subjects but its moral force is extended to a " mixed multitude " who, from not being formed after a divine sort, but only in a human way, are carried forward in a natural manner; and instead of lending strength to the spiritual movement they become its weakness.
And even when there has been a real work accomplished in souls, there has been another source of weakness introduced: the persons blessed clustered in a natural way around the instruments through whom the blessing reached them, and this became a snare to both parties, and weakened the power of the testimony to the Holy One and the True, the Sovereign Opener. God was not fully trusted, but there was a natural leaning upon an arm of flesh, and when this gave way, many blessed, but unestablished, saints who had been rejoicing in the new life in the Spirit, and fresh blessing, gave way: for where faith was only in a leader and not in the living God, if his faith failed, and he became discouraged because of some " Perrez-Uzzah," those attached to him had not spiritual energy to stand fast in the Lord, hold on, and go forward. " The children are come to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth." As in human, so in spiritual " affairs," there is " a tide " which must be taken " at the flood " if any great spiritual achievement is to be accomplished. The flood came, but for lack of faith and " virtue " it has not led on to spiritual fortune, but has become dissipated into general failure.
If a ship is seen to be going to pieces on the shallows, what is the great and uppermost thought in the minds both of those who are in the ship and on the shore? The rescue of the passengers and crew. Man the lifeboat, and strike out boldly through the stormy sea and save all you possibly can! And if there be religious shipwreck, is it not like God that there should be a fresh energy of the Spirit in rescuing shipwrecked saints, and bringing them to land? It was true moral condition that was wanting; and the pressure in ministry carrying many before it without chart, rudder, or compass, or the personal ability to profit by them had they possessed them, a break-down was inevitable; and it has come in the case of thousands. But is God to allow his children to perish in the storm? Will Christ Jesus not be seen walking on the stormy waves for the rescue of His imperiled disciples?
A sure work of rescue is being done, in the riches of God's grace, for such as have felt their misery as lost saints (has did Job), as truly as they had felt their misery as lost sinners. Job was what all would call a most beautiful character: yet it was a dreadful time to the " perfect " man of Uz when God allowed Satan to break him in pieces and his friends to charge him falsely, until he cursed the day of his birth; but it led to a blessed issue. Few saints have seen God and stood face to face with Him, until their utter evilness of, nature has been seen in a truthful and humbling way that led them to thorough self-judgment according to the holiness of God. But Job had this when he is led to exclaim: " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee, wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." He saw himself a ruined man in his circumstances when all the calamities detailed in the earlier part of the book overtook him: his friends, " miserable comforters " tried to ruin him in his character by proving to their own satisfaction that he must be a wicked man to be subjected to such judgments; but when he saw God it was neither in circumstances nor in character, he saw the ruin, but in himself. As Isaiah, when he saw God, cried out: “Woe is me for I am, undone," so when Job saw God he saw the utter worthlessness of self (which be had not seen when all was going well with him), and he said, " Wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." In the presence of Satan when he smote' him with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown, " he took him a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes." But when he saw God there is no thought of sitting down "to scrape himself " but he says, " I abhor myself and repent "—judge myself utterly good-for-nothing, and not to be improved by any amount of scraping: " and repent in dust and ashes." A true sight of God exposes a saint to himself so thoroughly that good self and bad self are equally an abhorrence. “I ABHOR MYSELF." God must have reality in His saints, however grievous it be to Him to bring them through the terrible ordeal necessary to secure it That which they had, for faith, at the " Red Sea " must come in as trial, testing, and humbling in " the wilderness." By any means and every means: ruined circumstances, broken health, death in the family, character impeached by friends who profess to be " comforters," by inward agonies and outward neglect, Job had to be broken down, but it was a sight of God that produced self-abhorrence and true repentance. When he found out that he had been contending with God he said, “Behold Iam vile," but when his eye saw Him, he said, " I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." This sheds wonderful light on the Lord's words, " If any man will come after me let him deny himself:" let him deny there is such a good-for-nothing person. Saints who see God now see the end of man in Christ's cross: " They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts," and thus, for faith, self is denied; and the man of faith speaks on this wise, " I have been crucified with Christ;" " Knowing that the old man is crucified with him that the body of sin might be destroyed." Job made a fresh start from the grave of self, as does the Christian from the cross and grave of Christ, and "the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning:" just as the saint of the present time makes a fresh start from Christ's cross and grave in new life in " the second man," a new creation in a risen Christ.
Not a few souls who had become stranded, when the testimony of God as to Christ and the restoring work of the Spirit for His glory was presented, and the end of self shown in the cross, were so deeply moved by it that they seemed on the point of being willing to descend into the grave of self and flesh; when all at once they started back from the fearful ordeal that stared them in the face, when they saw t hat the demand was to part with all that flesh holds dear, and have a glorified Christ, and all that one finds in Him instead of self and man's world, including the world that is composed of a happy circle of saints. Being like Job, of a beautiful character and having a good reputation, and a circle of friends who would regard the devotedness that completely sets aside the first man and all his belongings, counting all but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, and being as singular as Paul who eventually lost all his Christian friends, and had to stand alone, only the Lord standing with Him, they shrank from being so literally for Christ, dreading the complete cutting off from the world which the cross gives, the entire abandonment of self as a thing to be abhorred, the parting from the delightful, yet self-centered, society of earnest Christian friends, and becoming " as little children," and as such to find themselves regarded as extreme, peculiar, assuming, or weak-minded by those who were wont to regard them with the highest respect and the most cordial affection. But there will be the abhorring and denying of self in every shape and form, if the Spirit give a true knowledge, spiritual apprehension, and enjoyment of Christ in glory. What was self to the angel-faced Stephen when he saw the glory of God and Jesus standing on the right hand of God 2 Not so much as to make him distracted (though the stones beat upon his poor body) from exhibiting the power and grace of his living association with that glorified One, for he prayed for his murderers, " Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." What was self to the persecuting zealot Saul when from the brightness above the mid-day sun he heard " that Just One " say, " am Jesus whom thou persecutest;" or when, as the Apostle from the Christ of glory and pressing towards Him as his goal, he could utter as his watchword" That I may win Christ and be found in Him "" One thing! " I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. For our living association is in heaven, whence we look for the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior."
The divine exclusiveness of the Spirit's action that leaves the saints with " no man save Jesus only," has proved too severe for even some of the foremost in zeal and service: they saw the consequences, stopt short, and failing in faith to go out stript and bare, the cross on a naked shoulder: their hearts failed them to become wholly detached from the first man, and live and move and have their being in a risen Christ in a new creation; they listened to the counsels of their own hearts, aided by the syren voice of trusted friends, and, with their desires for better things suppressed, they found their way back into the ordinary fellowship of unspiritual professors who refuse to allow that there is any higher enjoyment of Christ than they themselves have known, or any deeper work of the Spirit than they have experienced. This knowing of men " after the flesh " took saints practically off the ground of resurrection, or rather showed it had never been known in the power of the Spirit in their souls, and that life only in Christ and new creation, where " all things are of God," was practically unknown. Though they have come out to Christ, in heart they have returned to Egypt, and they have failed to experience as a living reality in their souls either the deliverance of the Red Sea with its triumphant song—the humbling process of the wilderness where the only resource is in God, or the divine entrance into the practical enjoyment of Christ in glory, and all spiritual blessing in Him, through the dried up Jordan, where the Red Sea and the Jordan coalesce, and death and resurrection with Christ are made good in the soul in the solemn moment when the ark rested in the midst of the river; they have neither come to the twelve stones set up in Gilgal, nor to what is meant by the twelve stones now hidden in the bed of the river where the feet of the priests that bare the ark rested until all the people had clean passed over Jordan. Oh, what a falling of carcases there has been in the wilderness! It is a solemn and salutary recollection for us all that only two men of the warrior host that came out of Egypt entered into Canaan: and that even the two most prominent leaders, Moses and Aaron, failed of entrance.
God must have reality in His saints: and He will ensure the having of it even if it should be by “terrible things in righteousness." But if we " hear the rod and who hath appointed it," and humble ourselves un der it, we shall find that there is still the same mighty heart behind His " mighty hand." But whoever thinks of reaching the practical enjoyment of full blessing in Christ, while the world is clung to, self unjudged, and the holiness of God and the end of man in the flesh in the cross is not seen, and still to go on and prosper as if nothing had happened, will find that the Holy Ghost must refuse to have a heavenly Christ and His witness to Him identified with such lightness. God must have realities, and if His saints refuse to reach them in grace and by the Spirit's unfoldings of God fully revealed in Christ, He will have to break them in pieces by judgment that we may not be condemned with the world. Whatever the means, God Himself must do all; and it will be accomplished by His grace. God may use a Jehu and his false zeal for the Lord to inflict His judgment upon iniquity; but it is a Hezekiah's confession and" carrying forth of the filthiness from the Holy place " that He employs to initiate the return to the worship of God in His appointed way, and to bring about a fresh work of general revival and joy, the like of which there had not been " since the time of Solomon." And grace alone secures holiness. " Now when all this was finished, all Israel that were present went out to the cities of Judah and brake the images in pieces, and cut down the groves, and threw down the high places and the altars out of all Judah and Benjamin, in Ephraim also and Manasseh, until they had destroyed them all." Blessed iconaclasm! God secures realities by the fresh action of His grace. And when we read of Hezekiah that " he in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord," we are prepared to hear of the blessed time and work of grace that followed. His first concern was with the awful state of the "house of the Lord," and all his efforts were directed towards that which was central and essential—the having the house and worship of God in their midst according to His Word. His heart was set upon God Himself, and his soul was humbled by the utter desolation of His house; and while he makes the deepest confession of their sinful and miserable state, he set about having the worship of God in God's way, “And when they had made an end of offering; the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves and worshipped. So the service of the Lord's house was set in order. And Hezekiah rejoiced and all the people that God had prepared the people for the thing was done suddenly."
It is the divinely-humbled soul God meets with His grace, and lifts up in the power of His Spirit, gives nearness to Himself in holy, happy fellowship, and uses for the blessing of others. “He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, but the rich he hath sent empty away." “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up." Christ hath not given up His assembly, but ever nourishes and cherishes it; and God has not given up His family, but watches over them with that same love that He had when He chose them in Christ, and gave His Son to redeem them, a love from which nothing can separate them. Yet there would seem to be an election according to grace now in a fallen Church, just as there was an election according to grace among the Jews when their doom as a nation had been suspended over them. How few have responded to the extraordinary grace of God in bringing out the revived testimony of the apostolic times. And how many who are professedly attached to it know nothing about it; so that the work that has brought the multitude together in acknowledged unity needs to be done over again in the power of the Holy Ghost, linking the soul of the individual in living and conscious association with Christ and heavenly things. It was so at the beginning, and it will be so at the close. The Spirit had baptized the waiting disciples into one body and made them all drink one Spirit. But the word. to the awakened Jews was: " Repent and be baptized every one of you, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." "If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet, because that Jesus was not yet glorified." This was the individual work at the beginning; and " if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto him, and will sup with him, and he with me," shows the individual character of the work continuing to the close. When vessels to dishonor, like Hymenæus and Philetus, appear as they now do in the house of God., grace acts in individuals to bring out separation by a personal purification, and we read, " If a man, therefore, purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use, and prepared unto every good. work." (2 Tim. 2:2121If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work. (2 Timothy 2:21).) " These things saith he that is holy, he that is true; he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth. I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it; for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and not denied. my name." The Word. and Name of the Holy and, the True, the Word as written, the Person as revealed, are all to the soul that knows the power of the gathering grace that causes saints to cluster around the glorious Son of God, and like the Annas and Simeons of the end of the Jewish dispensation " to wait for the Lord. Jesus Christ as Savior,” and the promised. " redemption" that shall be ours by resurrection or transformation when " the Lord himself shall descend from heaven" to take us in glorious bodies like His own to the heavenly home in the Father's house, of which He hath spoken.
But some will say, there is nothing new in all this: it is only that which has been sounding in our ears ever since we listened to the gospel of the glory of Christ. But the novelty is that by the grace of God it is going farther than the ears, for in the fresh power of God's Spirit it is now sounding in convicted consciences, humbled souls, and bowed and melted hearts. “Has this been the case with you?" I would ask of such saints as are full of the recovered truth, position, and privileges, making them feel "rich and increased in goods," and having need of nothing. “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me."
Are you convicted of never having seen God—never having had fellowship with the Father and the Son, giving fullness of joy? Has yours been a Christianity that is a mere Jewish thing—as if the veil were still unrent and God behind a curtain dwelling in the thick darkness? Have you a consciousness that you have never gone into the presence of God fully revealed in Christ and His cross and death, by the new and living way, new-made for us through the veil that is to say His flesh? And have you been convicted that, even though a saint, and loved. as such by the Lord. Jesus, you have never had personal intimacy and fellowship with Him such as this to which His own word of love calls you? Then may God grant that you may regard His knock, hear His voice, and open to a waiting, loving Jesus, and no longer have Him outside your door, but dwelling in your hearts by faith in the energy of the Spirit, that being rooted and grounded in love, and knowing the love Christ that passeth knowledge, ye may be filled unto all the fullness of God. Oh! that we may all give heed to the rousing midnight cry: " BEHOLD THE BRIDEGROOM! Go ye out to meet Him! "