Truths as I have seen them : being addresses on the spiritual life

Front matter

BEING

Addresses on the Spiritual Life

BY

Preface

Another book on the ever-living themes of gospel truth. Why ? Because the author proclaiming the truths herein declared, has been earnestly requested to leave them in a more permanent form. If they should be half as helpful when written, as when delivered in the fervor of the spirit, it will be sufficient excuse for publishing them. The writer lays no claim to originality, and can only ask a place among the many, by virtue of his type of expressing known truth. Some of the perplexing questions of to-day have been set at rest in his own mind, and many have been helped as these truths have been unfolded. It is in the hope that others may gain the same liberty, and see the fulness there is in Christ Jesus, that he pens these words. He makes no claim to literary achievement. The writer is not seeking cold logic, but living truth plainly stated. As to 'defects, they will be found in abundance for those who seek them. May the blood of Jesus enswathe us all in its purity ; the love of God fire every faculty to its intensest heat, and the Holy Spirit transform us into the divine image.

Introduction

Before Pilate Jesus said, "To this end was I born, that I should bear witness unto the truth." This implies that we live in a world which greatly needs the truth, and that the truth is established, diffused, and maintained by competent witnesses. Jesus was such a witness. He had the unique qualification of identity with the truth. He was the only man of Adam's race who could say, " I am the truth." He calls every one born into his kingdom to follow his example, to do essentially the same work. In his high-priestly prayer he says, " I have given them thy word. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." The incarnation was a veil in which Divinity dwelt, receiving the words of the Father on one side, and handing them out to men on the other side. These words are to be so incorporated into our lives, so identified with us by an inward experience and transfiguration, as to qualify us to re-present them to the whole human family. The truth to which Christ bore witness had this peculiarity, — it was the only remedy for the world's spiritual maladies, and was distasteful to all depraved hearts. It has always required heroism to stand up and proclaim unaccepted and unpopular truth, the moral ruin

INTRODUCTION. 7

of man, and the efficacy of Christ's blood to save from the guilt of sin, the love of sin, and the pollution and inbeing of sin, here and now, through an all-surrendering faith in our adorable Saviour, without doing or suffering anything more. This doctrine of entire sanctification, the gate to Christian perfection this side of the grave, has always encountered opposition, and it is always raising up more and more intelligent and valiant advocates to restate and defend it against all comers. This is indeed encouraging, and specially gratifying to the veterans who are laying aside the harness, and are sitting in the door of the tent to see younger soldiers fight under the same flag.

There can never be too many books written on the highest possibilities of grace in bringing believers into evangelical perfection. Every book benefits its author, his circle of friends, and if written from a glowing Christian experience, it will minister instruction and inspiration to inquiring souls in all lands. This book, which I am happy to have the honor of introducing to the religious public, is a condensed presentation of sermons, evidently written according to the advice given to the students of the Lane Theological Seminary by Dr. Lyman Beecher : " Students, pump yourselves full of the subject, knock out the bung, and let Nature caper." The reader will find something superior to rhetorical excitement in this book. He will find indelible proofs of the unction of the Holy Ghost. Books written under the promptings of this indefinable, melting, suasive power are fittest to survive. They satisfy the cravings of successive gen-

8 INTRODUCTION.

erations long after the fascinating address to the imagination has found its grave on the top shelf in the neglected alcove.

A glance at the Table of Contents will show a wide range of live topics. Such themes as " Witnessing to Your Faith" and "Divine Healing" are especially timely, considering the mischievous practical errors with which these subjects are disfigured at the present hour.

The discussion of "The Relation of the Senses, Appetites, and Desires to Holiness " throws much light on a topic which very much needed vindication against extreme opposite views which would put the standard of holiness so high as to drive it out of the world, or so low as to palliate sin under the name of infirmity.

In conclusion, I predict that this book will be a blessing to every candid reader who " is of the truth ; " that is, who aspires to know the truth, and to follow whithersoever she may lead. The writer makes this prediction because he finds the hours spent with the proof-sheets to be a season of delightful communion of the Holy Spirit. Truths which are good electric conductors from heaven to me, will not fail to be the media of great grace to others.

DANIEL STEELE.

Milton, June 26, 1897.

Contents

CHAPTER ""'"

I. Sin. — Its Nature 1 1

II. Sin's Only Remedy 29

II. Sin's Only Remedy

The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from sin. — / John i. 7.

All my griefs, I can better and better see, lie in a good measure at my own door ; were I right in my own heart, nothing else would be far wrong with me. Life of Carlyle, vol. ii., p. 368.

The preservation of his personality from moral taint is man's first duty. — Rev. A. J. French, B.A., Manchester, England.

He [Jesus] was the first to insist that the one bondage a man need fear was sin ; that no man need be the slave of sin unless he willed ; that freedom from sin was perfect liberty, and that any man could enter into heaven by retiring within a clean and loving souL — Ian Maclaren.

When Henry Ward Beecher said, " That thought of blood never did me the least good in the world. The idea of blood is not to my taste ; it pertains to the old sacrifices. I do not like that text," the keynote of

sin's remedy was hushed in the ears of his listeners, and heaven's song was almost blasphemously spoken against ; for John heard the redeemed in heaven sing, " Unto him who hath loved us, and loosed us from our sins in his own blood," showing that among the glorified, the text Mr. Beecher did not like was the one that made heaven ring with hosannas. With thousands of the professed followers of Jesus Christ the same idea prevails. All such persons will be found unsound on the nature and remedy for sin ; and the fruit of such ministries will show that the sin question is not properly reached, and none of its advocates are being cured of the malady. In a previous chapter attention was called to the nature and character of sin ; we now desire to dwell upon its remedy.

The cross of Jesus Christ stands for God's suffering and sacrifice on account of sin. However awful the scene, and shocking to refined sensibility, it is the work of sin, a portrayal of its true nature and attitude toward purity, and we ought to be more shocked in the presence of what caused it than in the tragedy of Calvary itself; and yet, strange to say, we speak in glowing terms of how revolting to refined sensibilities the scenes of Calvary are, and yet hug its cause to our bosom. Awful as this expression of its enmity is, it is not the complete revealment of its true nature. If sin could produce a Calvary, and not exhaust itself, it is certainly something more than a weakness or misfortune, and must have its cause of potency in something more than defective attributes. It is that which perverts the attributes of man's nature, and makes them incapable of self-adjustment. It is a vital enmity to God, that nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ has ever been able to remove. When John saw Jesus coming to him, he did not speak of him as " a lovely Example " they should seek to imitate, though he is pre-eminently such, but first as " the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of

SIN'S ONLY REMEDY. 31

the world." A spotless, sinless life of love, vested with all possible powers, may charm, and call forth boundless admiration, but it cannot have anything in it to assure one of a remedy for sin ; through it I might see the exceeding sinfulness of my sin, but it is mockery to ask me to imitate such a life, as only " like begets like," and sinfulness is the antithesis of spotlessness. Imitation of purity cannot overcome the malady of sin. One of the vital questions of the day is, How far can sin be eradicated in this life ? Several theories are advanced. One is, that we cannot be free from its dominion in this life, — a common one among the masses of professed Christians. A multitude of witnesses who have lived under the dominion of sin prove by their saved lives that this theory is false. Another theory is, that the dominion of sin may be broken, but that sin cannot be eradicated. Another slightly more positive is, that divine infilling with the Spirit may paralyze the sin life, but not destroy it. This is the Keswick doctrine, easily adopted by earnest souls, as it leaves the vital fact untouched. These teach we are to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin ; but it is only reckoning, for no death has ensued. And the cardinal fallacy of this doctrine is, it requires us to regard ourselves as being what in reality we are not. Such a principle is utterly false, and is instantly to be rejected by a sound mind. That I do not misrepresent the teachers of this theory, I quote from Mr. Meyer, the leading advocate of this

32 TRUTHS AS T HA VE SEEN T&EM.

docrine, "The surest proof the old man is not dead is that he sends back the report that he is." Paul's report, then, according to the Keswick teaching, was false when he said, " I have been crucified with Christ, and live no more myself, but Christ is living in me " (Gal. ii. 20) ; and his doctrine untrue when he taught " that the body of sin [not sinful body] might be destroyed," (Rom. vi. 6) ; or when he propounds the question, " How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein ? " Paul never taught that the surest proof the old man of sin was not dead was the report given that he was. This theory of a repressed sinful nature is exceedingly gratifying to the flesh in these days, when Christ is laying the axe at the root of the tree ; it puts a limit on God's power, the extent of the atonement, and the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Because Messrs. Meyer, Gordon, Pebloe, Peirson, and others have reached successfully the repression of "the old man," it is no proof that equally reliable witnesses have not been made pure from sin.

We have just as much right to believe a witness whose truthfulness in other things cannot be questioned, when revelation and a number of equally reliable witnesses testify to the same facts. Another fallacy of these teachers is, they confound self and sin, teaching "two egos." The old man of Rom. vi. 6 is not being, but sin. The Word says, "The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." Either

S/AT'S ONLY REMEDY. 33

our spirit-natures are pure or impure when begotten : if impure, we have nothing in consciousness that can portray purity, and we are incapable of the knowledge of the fact without its reality; and he who testifies to its reality without the consciousness is a false witness, and he who denies the testimony of a reliable witness who demonstrates the spirit of his testimony is an unjust judge of another. When one states sin is not eradicated, he simply witnesses to his own states of conciousness, but cannot by so doing disprove another's testimony.

The blood of Jesus Christ is the objective cause of the removal of sin. No amount of life purifies. The Word does not say, " Now unto him who demonstrates ' the expulsive power of love,' " but " unto him who hath washed us from our sins in his own blood." Any theory that teaches the postponement of the utter eradication of sin must be false, or prove two things. First, that a proper interpretation of Scripture teaches the necessity of sin remaining in the believer. Second, that God can be as much, glorified in a merely repressed carnal nature as in a purified one. The first has never been sustained by scholarly interpretation of the Word ; the second is contrary to the nature of God. The Scriptures nowhere represent love as a cleansing power. Love alone is not the remedy for sin ; it is blood, — blood sacrificially shed for us to meet the sin of our nature. Love is the spirit-life of true human nature.

34 TRUTHS AS I HAVE SEEM THEM.

which if not purged from sin can never be made perfect in love. Love has never been known to remove an impurity in the history of the race. When John said, " The blood cleanseth us from all sin," he did not

mean the acts expressing sin, or the penalty consequent upon sin, but of the sin itself. Purity as a subjective experience is impossible by admiring a beautiful life, or copying right conduct. Agony! agony!! for sin unto death ; this is the thought that reveals its true nature. Christ in Gethsemane in the bloody sweat, in the dying groans, is the revelation of what is transpiring in the heart of God on account of sin, showing us its true moral character. He is none the less moved now than when clad in humanity for the same cause. Where sin is, his heart is moved graciously with compassion ; and he points to Calvary's blood as an abiding expression of his sacrificial love for the sinner, and the remedy for his sin. A perfect, beautiful life may reveal what a being is in himself, but it takes the "blood drops" to show how such a being is related to another who has sin. Without this manifestation in blood of how God feels toward sin, there could be no basis for inward purity. The object of our cleansing is not love, however beautiful in form and power, but love in sacrifice shedding blood for the remission of sins and the purity of the sinner ; and God having so expressed himself on Calvary, there needs no other sacrifice for sin : we can now see how he feels toward it, and his process

S/JV'S ONLY REMEDY. 35

of removing it. To think he has any plan by which he only cares to repress it, and not remove it, is to minify its moral turpitude, or limit the present efficacy of his blood ; for the theory that sin can be made serviceable is to prove some poison is healthy for a healthy system. A cleansed heart has keener sensibilities for the miseries and woes of others, and a more tender appreciation of the possibilities of salvation. This thought must not be overlooked in the demand for present purity.

The object for purity in the mind of God is not mere whiteness for its own sake, but the character a pure heart produces. Purity is not the endoi the cleansing ; it is the possibilities vested in a pure nature he has in view. Fitness, as much as prevention of evil, is involved in this question of purity. Correct conceptions of God, his love, and manner of revealing himself, are involved in purity. The pure in heart see (know) God. Cleansing removes the sin, and inwardly delivers the soul clear of it, so the light of truth may shine clearly through it. As long as there is conscious impurity, there will be a recoil from the immediate presence of God, and some form of substitute as a mediator that hinders the " face to face " revelation of God. When cleansed from sin we " draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience." A revelation of God's holiness to a heart where sin is, causes him to seek a hiding-place. Through the blood we enter a new and living way into the holiest of all. Every man that hath this hope in him of seeing Jesus as he is, " purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

The being quickened by the Spirit, or empowered by him, cannot impart a consciousness of purity ; it is a negative state, and any amount of impartation can only mislead the soul from a clear discernment of a state of purity. Consciousness of impurity remains distinct after much empowering ; nor will a soul be at rest in the purity of another, however pure : the soul must have purity transferred to itself to have a basis for fellowship. Our purity must partake of the nature of the blood that cleanseth us.

Much of the teaching of theology has been only half truth, or perverted truth concerning the object of Christ's shedding his blood, making it appear that God demands it as a satisfaction to appease his wrath, and not the truth that God himself was working in the sacrifice to " take away sin." The scapegoat went into the wilderness not to be punished, but to bear away the sins of the people. Christ bore our sins in his own body, that we, "being dead to sin, might live unto righteousness."

The terms " washed," "purged," "cleansed," refer to a process in us, and not a work done for us. "Wash me" said the Psalmist. "Purge me," "cleanseth us from all sin."

To tell a soul to think like Christ thought, to love

SIN'S ONLY REMEDY. 37

like he loved, and walk as he walked, who by nature has neither ability nor disposition to do so, is to mock human helplessness under sin. To constantly talk about getting something that will empower us, separate from the transformation of ourselves, is a great fallacy. Purity necessarily precedes power, when the power sought is character and goodness. The idea of cleansing necessarily comes from one of sacrifice. Why do we want purity ? Because of what it makes possible. To accomplish certain things there must be sacrifice, and sacrifice is death to selfishness. To accomplish certain moral things, purity is essential, and to be pure implies being cleansed from all sin. Jesus, " that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate." He suffered that he might sanctify. Purity implies death to the sin life. It takes pure nature to undertake hitherto hopeless tasks with faith for victory. Purity of heart is essential to a pure gospel of Jesus Christ ; only in proportion as the work of purity has been wrought in the church has the truth been seen and made to triumph. ' Purity is essential to right thinking concerning God. Right is not conceived by a logical process, but by revelation to a pure nature.

Many reduce the whole question of salvation to a pleasing romance, and our character a product of tender feelings toward God, when it means a pure nature so in love with right, it could not for one moment consider any other course of action ; and sin in every form is expelled from the domain of the heart. Christ demands by virtue of his sacrifice, on account of sin, that it be utterly removed from us ; as its continuance continues his suffering and the suffering of others, and his righteous law demands either the destruction of the sin, or of the sinner who will not come under his cleansing power.

" Jesus, thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress ; Midst flaming worlds in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head."

III. Regeneration

Ye must be born from above. — Jesus Christ.

No organic change, no modification of environment, no mental energy, no moral effort, no evolution of character, no progress of civilization, can endow any single human soul with the attribute of Spiritual Life. — Henry Drummond.

The ingeneration of a new life into a dead spirit is the basal fact in our holy religion. It demands an act of the Author of Life, who alone can properly relate it to the form through which it is to manifest itself. When Nicodemus, an eminent teacher himself, came to Jesus to quietly interview this new teacher come from God, he showed his ignorance of spiritual truth in the questions he propounded, and Jesus showed his authorship of life in his answers.

Nicodemus, a rabbi, scholarly, respectful, a good sample of religious development under the most helpful environments, was, nevertheless, unspiritual. His thought had, no doubt, been quickened by natural revelation, his sesthetical nature stirred by the beautiful and the good, a thousand pleasing things had stirred his emotions ; but none of them, or all combined, was not, nor could produce, spiritual life. Had he been spiritual he would have had fellowship with Jesus at once, and other questions would have been propounded in keeping with his stage of spiritual life. Jesus, in his human consciousness, stood before him a revelation of true human nature quickened into being by the Spirit, and assured him there need be no mystery concerning it; that spiritual life was not a procreation from a living soul, but a direct generation by the Holy Spirit, and though a man should enter a thousand times into his mother's womb for birth, in each case it would be of the flesh, the difficulty being not the frequency of the birth, but the nature of the begetter.

It is high time the religious world settled down to the fact that " that which is born of the flesh is flesh," and that there can be no spiritual life without spiritual generation. Ethical culture and intellectual development are helpful, and ought not to be ignored, but cannot produce spiritual life ; and we do great violence to the truth when we place ourselves as witnesses to spiritual truth on such a false foundation. The masses who profess to be born again are depending on the refining and elevating influences of morals and correct externals as proof of spiritual life. These, no doubt, are helpful, and a character of growth may be discovered under their influence; but it is not the growth of a new life, but the corrective influence of thought on our wrong habits, but not upon our wrong nature. The flesh-nature can never become spiritual; an impassable

KE GENERA TION. 4 1

barrier stands before it. Man needs a revelation of God in his inner being, and that revelation a demonstrated verity, to settle forever all doubt ; and nothing short of a felt divine life can do it. About all that has been permanently settled in spiritual things has been established by test. In matter, mind, or spirit, proud reason can boast of but little triumph. To know God, which is eternal life, we must be born of his Spirit; and the endeavor to know him by any other process must only lead to self-evolved theories contrary to the facts manifested to spirit-born souls.

Life is not a growth, an increase, a development, or an evolution; it is an impartation, a gift. "The gift of God is eternal life." How can that which must come from outside us, and is not in us, be made to grow by anything we may do ? There are no forces for good lying latently in the hidden depths of our human nature, waiting for the fructifying influence of rain and sunshine to develop them into a lovely character. Everything after its own kind obtains here. If we have spiritual life, it must come from antecedent spiritual life. It is not self-generated or evolved. Jesus came to bestow it. "I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly " The great conflict is between the theory of an ingenerated life and an evolved one. We teach that nothing spiritual can be evolved until it is first involuted ; that spiritual generation is a specific divine act, and demands faith in the Person and Power that generated the human Christ.

We have not reached any ultimate analysis of life of any kind ; we only know it by its manifestations. Revelation tells us how we may know we have been regenerated, or born again. The regenerate heart "does not commit sin," "loves the brethren," "overcomes the world," " the wicked one touches him not," "hath the witness in himself," and "the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirits that we are the children of God." None of these manifestations of divine generation can exist in the absence of the rest. There can be no response to God in a soul where his life is not found.

The law, "Do this, and thou shalt live," and "The soul that sinneth, it shall die," is not repealed. It is constitutional law, and there can be no repeal without changing the constitution of the race. God's method is to restore the life that made obedience possible, so that walking after the Spirit, " the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us." To be regenerated, one must surrender the principle of disobedience to all known law. When we yield ourselves up to obey sin, we must necessarily become its servant ; and his servants we are whom we serve. Christ said, "No man can serve two masters." We sin unto death, or live unto righteousness. No man has ever been regenerated who has not yielded himself up to a life of filial obedience.

No man can love God and not love his brother. No man can have a preponderating love to God, and not overcome the love of the world. " To be fleshly minded is death."

Thousands believe with Matthew Arnold that Christianity is "morality touched by emotion," and not a divine life producing a Christly character. " Morality touched by emotion " may produce a religious zealot or sentimental self-righteousness, but can never produce a Godlike character in its relation to righteousness. Only those who are regenerated are willing to be put to the tests God's word requires of regenerate hearts. A desire for a better life, change of association and environment, good citizenship, temperate conduct, conformity to religious forms and services, may all exist, and one remain in an unregenerate state. Some of the most bigoted, un-Christlike professing Christians of to-day, living on cold logic and clear conceptions of what a regenerate heart should be, have never been regenerated, and are opposed to the life and spirit of those who have been. ' Nor does any amount of energy in a good cause prove the existence of spiritual life. Saul of Tarsus exceeded in this, and yet was "dead in trespasses and sins."

Life has forces of its own. A tree is but an outward expression of an unseen vegetable life ; a Christian an outward expression of Christ's life in us ; both grow or die as the life is, or is not, manifest through them. Regeneration is the impartation of a distinct spiritual life in which is contained power over sin and its dominion ; and as long as the divine " seed " remains, sin's dominion is broken. The will has no power in itself over sin, but it subjects our beings to the divine life, and they have "power to become the sons of God." How useless to think of regeneration by our activities! We are "born from above," "not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God."

It is the nature of spiritual life to be sinless, and it is incapable of producing sin. The choice that begets sin, ejects the divine life from the soul. Regeneration is the beginning of a Godlike life in the soul, and its lowest activity is above sin ; and while this life remains, the sin life is overcome. Emphatically, regeneration is renewal, and not removal. It does not stand for the removal of anything infused by sin into our being. Sanctification negatively stands for this. As the absence of the divine life in man leaves him subject to the dominion of his sin nature, so the presence of the divine life saves him from this subjection. " Sin and death " represent cause and effect. Sin severs "the spirit of life in Christ Jesus." Regeneration restores it. "The spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death." To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life."

An expressed purpose to become a Christian in thousands of instances is considered sufficient to secure regeneration, or is made an end, instead of a means toward an end. The sad feature in this case is, that nothing divine is revealed, and the soul remains in uncertainty concerning the facts that bring in "peace with God." A regenerate soul knows certain essential things concerning his relation to God, independent of sense or reason, by which he confidently calls him Father, and rests on his own promises voiced by the Spirit. As surely as one feels the warmth of the sun, standing under its warm rays, so surely every regenerate soul knows God. Every regenerate soul hath eternal life. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent ; " therefore every regenerate soul knows God. Regenerate nature produces righteous character by obedience to its illuminations, and it cannot be produced otherwise. Without this divine generation all the other glorious experiences of an unfolding life become impossible.