Forward movements of the last half century

Front matter

ChapJSfll Copyright M.4JS 8helf iT^

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Books by flrtlwr C- Pimoit

Contents

PAGE

Introduction v

The Increase of Personal Holiness i

Introduction

THE NEED OF A SOUND SPIRITUAL BASIS

It is always important to begin at the beginning. History is not only philosophy teaching by examples, but it is a constant ethical lesson to the studious and candid observer, revealing the secrets of success oftentimes through the record of failure, and constantly challenging a fresh attention to the laws which underlie the truest and largest and most enduring success.

In attempting to trace a few of the more conspicuous spiritual movements of the half century just closing, the main purpose is not so much a historical review, as a practical and spiritual result — a new incitement and inspiration in the direction of further effort, and more aggressive and progressive forms of service to God and man.

This half century has been lustrous and illustrious for the multiplied philanthropic Christian and missionary activities which have sprung up on every side, as growths of God's own planting. But, whatever has been thus far accomplished, we can only think of Coleridge's words about " the petty done " and " the vast undone." Modern methods, hundred handed as they are, have not yet begun to overtake the misery and poverty, want and woe of humanity. Beginnings are at best but starting points, not goals ; revelations of possibilities rather than records of achievements. With the progress of the race, come new disclosures of human need, need so various, so multiplied, vi INTRODUCTION

so extreme, as almost to paralyze effort by the measureless field of opportunity which it presents. The great question still awaits answer: How shall we cope with the destitution and distress which manifest themselves in myriad forms, all about us ?

One inquiry concerns the essence of all true work for God and man, namely, the principles which constitute the base blocks upon which must be reared any enduring structure of service. If these be unsound or defective, there may be need of a reconstruction from the foundation. All serviceableness has its preparations, and to overlook or disregard them prevents even the best-intentioned work from being either effective or lasting.

In his book, " From Death into Life," Mr. Haslam tells of an elderly Cornish woman, deeply taught in the things of God, who, feeling that he was seeking to secure a higher standard of Christian activity without due care to lay right foundations in personal holiness, asked him one day as he passed by, intent on the new church edifice then in his mind, " Mr. Haslam, are ye goin' to build your spire from the top?" The quaint question was an arrow, not easily dislodged. He could not get the thought out of mind. " Have I begun at the beginning ? Am I building from the bottom, or absurdly attempting to construct from the top down ? " Such inquiries he kept asking himself until compelled to start anew and lay the broad, deep, firm foundation of all holy serving in holy praying and holy living. Such experience has been often repeated. Those who have led the way in godly enterprise have seen the radical need of a reconstruction from the base upward, and from them we may learn a divine lesson, that, to make sure first of all that the foundation is well laid on the bed rock of God's eternal plan, is to make the whole structure of our Christian activity to take on new proportions and dimensions, new solidity and beauty, and to prepare us to build

INTRODUCTION vii

into it gold, silver and precious stones, and not wood, hay and stubble. To be thus in fellowship with the great Architect and Builder gives a divine character to our whole work. It becomes in fact His work rather than ours; and, like the Temple of old, it grows up toward completion and consummation, noiselessly, symmetrically, ceaselessly, with no carnal elements built into it, with no stone or timber misplaced, and with no attempt to reshape by tools of worldly wisdom and human invention the blocks which the Divine Workman has hewn and polished in His own quarries and workshops.

It is of human nature to degenerate ; and hence eternal vigilance is needful if work for God is to be kept free from worldly elements which corrupt and weaken it. If prayerful and candid disciples survey the present status of the Christian church they cannot fail to see how it is leavened by sectarianism, sacramentalism, ritualism, Romanism, rationalism and a secularism quite as fatal to spirituality as any of the rest. From such conditions a true self-sacrificing type of service is hardly to be expected. There is a serious lack of gospel preaching; reckless extravagance reigns with practical denial of stewardship ; and a low level of piety prevails with its natural offspring, virtual infidelity. The church confronts the world, with its thousand million unconverted souls, scattered over fields, continental in breadth, and proves incompetent to reach them with the gospel ; while at home, there is a widening gulf between the church and world, which the church cannot bridge, and meanwhile intemperance, licentiousness and anarchy become more threatening and revolutionary.

With deep affection for the brotherhood of Christ and the work of Christ, it seems of great importance to ask whether God is not leading His people to reconstruct all Christian enterprises on a firmer foundation. He seems to us by many signs to be laying new emphasis upon personal viii INTRODUCTION

and practical holiness both in the individual, and in the collective church life. If our best forms of service are to risk no collapse but prove equal to the growing needs of mankind, some conditions are needful on our part that we may command blessing from above. The word of God must be restored to its supreme place as the inspired, infallible testimony of God ; the personality and power of the Holy Spirit, the indispensableness of Christ to human salvation, the universal priesthood of believers and the need of a simple and spiritual worship, the call to separation and selfdenial for Christ, and the neglected hope of the Lord's coming, — these and like truths must be preached, taught, driven home to the conscience — until God's people are brought into more personal, living, loving sympathy with Himself.

When Rev. Dr. Alexander MacLaren, of Manchester, spoke at the Jubilee of the Free Church of Scotland, he thrilled and awed his hearers by characteristic treatment of " Spiritual Dynamics." He showed how wide reaching is the range of spiritual truth, by an illustration which had the force of a demonstration, using the image of a compass, with one foot firmly set in the true center, and the other describing a circle which, while that center was preserved, could not possibly err in width or range of circumference. Our first necessity is to get the truth center and fix there the point of our compass, and then, however wide the circle of our activity, we shall always be right, scriptural, spiritual ; and, on the contrary, if we have not the true center and do not keep it, our best enterprises, by whatever name called, will be more or less failures.

Thus far, all great epochs of spiritual activity have been circles with one center : a revival of Evangelical piety; and, even within these, smaller circles with a uniform center: Prayer. In other words, all wider or smaller enterprises of a true Christian character have had one center — a new

INTRODUCTION ix

approach to God in believing supplication and intercession. John Wesley unconsciously founded a great movement, known as Methodism, whose results already are five and a half million of adherents ; but all this can be traced back to a holy club of four that met in Lincoln College, Oxford, one hundred and seventy years ago, for cultivation of holiness and prayer. The great revivals that swept over the United States and Britain between 1830 and i860 were all the result of prayer that began with a few burdened souls. The China Inland Mission leaped into life under the inspiration of one man's supplication. The Bristol Orphanages, with all the work of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution and of missions in all lands, may be traced to that one apostle of prayer, George M tiller .

If we are to sweep a wider circle of power round now unoccupied territory, and have real progress rather than apparent and superficial advance, the compass of all our plans must fix its foot in the firm, pivotal center of believing prayer and the higher holiness that is bound up inseparably with devout and privileged communion with God. In the brief sketches that follow, we shall find examples of this great law of the spiritual realm, that, in all solid advance in missions and in all other forms of holy enterprise, there is first of all a higher type of holy living, which is itself due to new power in supplication.

There has been no time within the memory of men now living, which has equaled the present for critical and pivotal interest. There is a general unrest and dissatisfaction among God's people, a common consciousness of the need of a higher standard of holiness, and a drawing into closer fellowship on the part of praying souls, overleaping all previous barriers of separation and exclusion, believers fraternizing who have been pent up within high sectarian fences. Close limits have restrained many Baptists from x INTRODUCTION

communing at the Lord's table with unimmersed believers, and many Anglicans from acknowledging as valid any ordination except that of prelatical bishops, and even from attending a dissenting place of worship; yet, even such walls have not been high enough to keep apart disciples who, in yearning for a deeper spiritual life, have found in other disciples an answering yearning, as, in water, face answereth to face.

In this union of all disciples in common prayer and self-surrender to God for holy living and serving, is to be found the most significant sign of the times. It suggests the one practical solution of the problem of missions, if not of all the perplexities of our Christian life. Certain it is that, wherever and so far as these movements have prevailed, the whole church has felt a new and reforming power at work. Prayer meetings have been multiplied and magnified : preaching has taken on new scriptural-tone, and new Spirit power: giving has become more spontaneous and liberal, and offers of service have been made in unprecedented numbers.

The more we study the question of the connection between piety and service, the more we are satisfied that to impart vigor and strength to spiritual life is to get down beneath all the accidental and superficial attendants of the difficulty, to its very root. If missions, for instance, languish, it is because the whole life of godliness is feeble. The command to go everywhere and preach to everybody is unobeyed, until the will is lost by self-surrender in the will of God. There is little right giving because there is little right living, and, because of the lack of sympathetic contact with God in holiness of heart, there is a lack of effectual contact with him at the Throne of Grace. Living, praying, giving and going will always be found together, and a low standard in one means a general debility in the whole spiritual being. We must come to feel and acknowl-

INTRODUCTION xi

edge this. And, that others may be brought into sympathetic contact with this flood-tide of spiritual sympathy and power which is now sweeping quietly over two continents, we have from the best sources possible, got accurate information on these subjects, and now spread this before our readers, together with accounts of such forms of Christian service as may help to illustrate the effctive working of the principles herein advocated.

May the God of all truth and grace add His blessing to the simple, humble effort to build up from the base a new and growing interest in the work to which our Lord gave Himself and appointed us !

Chapter I

All real advance finds its starting-point, as also its goal, in more conformity to God. Character lies back of conduct ; what we are ultimately shapes what we do. Hence the stress of the whole word of God lies upon the transformation of the man himself. His outward acts, his gifts, his prayers, his whole external life, are of little consequence if they are not the expression and exhibition of a renewed spirit, an inner self that partakes of the beauty of the Lord.

Like a bold headland at sea, with its lighthouse to guide the mariner, stand, in the survey of the past fifty years, the singularly varied attempts to raise the standard of practical godliness, sometimes called " Holiness Movements/'

Under different names and from divers sources, like mingling streams merged into one flood, the current has been in one direction. Different names — " Entire Sanctification," " Second Conversion," " Higher Christian Life," have clung to these movements ; some of them have been stigmatized as " Perfectionism," or mildly described as " for the deepening of spiritual life." As certain phrases have become obnoxious to criticism, linked with fanatical extremes, or calculated to mislead, others have been adopted ;

bat it is plain that, in all these efforts, the same Holy Spirit has been at work, showing disciples their lack of conformity to God and leading willing souls to new steps of self-surrender and appropriation of Christ. This, beneath all change of names and variety of forms, is the essential fact.

The master problem is how to make the possible life of a disciple real? There is an ideal which is to be kept before us as the model and pattern of perfection, and which we shall not reach — to reach which would leave no more progress possible. When Thorwaldsen had, for once, realized his own conception in a statue, he felt that henceforth he could accomplish nothing. But there is a possible life, a measure of actual approximation to the ideal, which is practically attainable, and has been attained; and it is a great mistake and mischief to count this possible and practicable life as a mere ideal, as is too often the case ; but worst of all to regard it as impracticable because the level of living is so low, and the habits of living so carnal, that the possible becomes impossible, the will being too weak to resist evil, and all aspiration being stifled with the impure air we breathe.

How far is a holy life, victorious over sin and restful in God, within reach ? and what are the secrets of entrance upon this Land of Promise, this present inheritance which God would have all His saints to enter and enjoy?

First, let us contrast the average life of disciples with the scriptural standard, and, at least, see what is lacking.

Socrates held his mission in Athens to be this, " to bring men from ignorance unconscious to ignorance conscious/' and the first step in all attainment is to see that we have not yet attained. From at least seven points of view this contrast may be studied :

i. The Realization and Verification of things unseen and eternal.

2. The Separation and Sanctification of conduct and character.

3. The Transformation of the Inner Life of disposition and temper.

4. The Enthronement of Christ as Master and Lord of the Whole Being.

5. The Experience of the Holy Spirit's indwelling and inworking.

6. The Enjoyment of the Rest Life of Faith, and freedom from anxiety.

7. The Entrance into the Holiest of All, or the right and privilege of Intercession.

If this be not the exact order of importance and of experience, it is not widely divergent therefrom ; and a few words upon each of these several points may help to impress the general theme upon our thought, and to show, how natural it is that God's people should feel the kindlings of a higher and holier desire, and aspire after some much more advanced attainment.

The sense of the unseen and eternal lies at the basis of spiritual life, which, by its very term, shows its kinship with the invisible and imperishable. This world is real, and seems real because it appeals to our bodily senses; the unseen world seems vague and illusive, because it is beyond the realm of sense, and, unless faith makes it real, it will grow more distant and shadowy, till it becomes a mere phantom of fancy. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews rebukes those who have not " by reason of use exercised their senses to discern good and evil." Obviously these are not bodily senses, but higher faculties given us of God, as channels of contact and communication with the unseen world. Reason is the sense of the true and false; conscience, of the right and wrong; sensibility, of the attractive and repulsive ; imagination, of the ideal and invisible ; memory is the sense of the past, and hope, of the future. If these senses are used, they become keener and more acute; if unused, duller and more blunt.

The main office of " closet " communion is the vivid sense of God, and hence our Lord's first lesson in the school of prayer emphasizes " thou " and " thy " — for it is necessary to shut all others out, in order to get the vivid vision of God. Far more important is it to hear Him speak to thee than to speak to Him * " Wait on the Lord " — literally, " be silent unto Him." This waiting for a vision prepares one for that " practice of the presence of God," which Jeremy Taylor makes the " third instrument of holy living." This vision of God makes the unseen world a verity, a reality, a certainty, as assured as the material universe, and he who thus walks with the unseen God, like Moses, endures as seeing Him who is invisible. The weekly Sabbath rest answers a similar purpose: it leaves us free to converse with celestial things. As the eye rests itself and improves its vision by occasionally looking away from nearer objects to the far horizon or the farthest stars of heaven, the whole soul rests by looking at the unseen and eternal. And he who robs God of holy time by secularizing the Sabbath, cheats himself far more.

So, also, it was expedient that Christ should go away, that henceforth He should not be known after the flesh; and that the Holy Spirit should come to dwell within, with all disciples and at all times, and school us to know Christ by that other unveiling of His personal presence through the inner sense, compelling us to walk by faith, not by sight, no longer dependent on the grosser carnal senses.

So soon as we really begin to live in this unseen realm and walk with this unseen presence, every other attainment becomes possible — in a sense natural. To be under the eye of God — consciously, constantly — to set God always before

* See very important text. Numbers vii. ; 89.

us, is to have Him at our right hand, so that we can not be moved. What holy intrepidity, when He is near, and what courage in conflict with evil and in confronting barriers to service ! The conduct and character become separated unto Him and sanctified, because it is impossible to sin deliberately while He is not lost sight of. It is only when we flee from His presence, like Jonah, that disobedir ence is habitual. To hold one's self directly under God's eye, and to stand before Him with the eye upon Him, waiting for His beck and glance, compels personal holiness — is itself the very attitude of holy obedience. In His presence sin flees as shadows before the light, for transgressions are deeds of darkness.

Even the inmost life of temper and disposition becomes transformed — transfigured — when we live as in His secret chambers. When He encompasses and enspheres us, He interposes between us and all the foes of our inward peace. Envy, jealousy, malice, anger, impatience, ungentlenesSj uncharitableness, unloveliness, — all these belong outside of the sphere where God and the saint meet and dwell together. It is amazing how immediate, and even instantaneous, may be the actual entrance into a new atmosphere of inward peace, when once a disciple, after many years of hopeless struggle and wrestle with that inward tormentor — a vicious temper, an unholy anger, an unsanctified disposition — suddenly enters into the conscious presence of God — feels that He is a living, present God, and that He can bring under control that wicked and unruly member, the tongue, and that even more unruly " member," the temper ; so that one just gives it over into His keeping and lets Him subdue it. And then, to see Him do it ! and not only conquer it, but displace it, and in its stead give outright its very opposite — flooding the heart with His love — so that instead of a constant War against evil, there is a new impulse, a passion for the right, so that we wonder that we ever saw any occasion for the childish impatience and fretf ulness and selfishness of past years !

What a step, too, when the keys of the whole house are surrendered up to the Lord Jesus, and the whole government of the little empire within transferred to His shoulder; when the last locked room and cupboard and secret chamber of our imagery and idolatry are thrown open to Him, and He sweeps out all the vile things which the godless life has hoarded and hidden; and then turns the very hiding places of our abandoned idols into the sanctuary of His presence and communion ! The enthronement of Christ in the soul — that is His manifestation unto the believer, as never unto the world, which is the crown of all promises. * Then it is that God " reveals His son in " us, and shows the vast difference between a Christ within and a Christ without — a Christ no longer knocking at the door but supping at the banquet board, He with us and we with Him.

Christ ought to be, and may be, on the throne of our inner being, Master, Lord, Sovereign. And when He is enthroned, self is dethroned. The self-life is the last inner enemy to be destroyed. It is the root of all forms of sin ; and, long after every known sin and weight are put away, it survives ; and when every other form of pride is brought into the dust, the subtle survival of the self-life is seen in the pride of humility. What a hydra-headed monster self is ! — self-trust, self-help, self-will, self-seeking, self-pleasing, self-defense, self-glory, always intruding between the soul and its true Sovereign. To enthrone Christ in the inmost life, is to find self-distrust, self-abandonment, self-surrender, self-denial, self-renunciation, self-commitment, self-oblivion, taking the place of those hideous evils already named.

As to the Spirit's work, how few disciples even under-

* John xiv. : 33.

stand it ! That sublime sentence of ten words : He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit * is the summit of all revelation as to the believer's inseparable wedlock with the Lord, and it is the key which unlocks both Epistles to the Corinthians. For, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is one with the believing human spirit, He must evince such unity by the impress of God left by Him upon the believer's inner life and outer life. And so Paul teaches that God's wisdom is reflected in the disciple's knowledge of divine things ; God's ownership, in His possession of the believer as His temple; God's sovereignty, in His distribution of gifts and spheres of services ; God's eternity, in the glory of the undying resurrection body ; God's power, in the believer's transformation into His likeness; God's holiness, in His sanctification, and God's blessedness, in His ecstatic visions and experiences, f

But, beside the Spirit's indwelling, our privilege is to know His threefold inworking: His sealing, in our assurance, His anointing, in our illumination, His filling, in our gracious power for service. What a monstrous evil is that, when a child of God, who may know and feel the miracle of such indwelling, inworking and outworking of the Divine Spirit, lives a life that so grieves and quenches the Holy Ghost, that He is like a silent " voice " or a stifled and scarce burning flame !

As to the Rest Life of Faith, with its casting of all care upon God, and its perfect peace of trust, the fact that such experience is possible ought to fill every disciple with a divine unrest until it is actually his possession. This is the spiritual Canaan, the true land of promise, now to be entered, appropriated, enjoyed. Egypt with its bondage, burdens, sins, and sorrows, left behind — the desert, with its wandering, barrenness, disquiets and defeats, also left

• 1 Cor. vi. : 17.

See 1 Cor. ii., vi., vii., xii., xv., and 2 Cor. iii., vi., xii.

S FORWARD MOVEMENTS

behind, and the Jordan of a new consecration and self-surrender crossed, that He who brought us out may bring us in, into conscious fellowship with God, victory over the Anakim, possession of the promises, and fruitfulness of service. All this disciples have known, like Paul, and, thank God, thousands now know ; and it is only because unbelief limits God and disobedience limits ourselves, that all who are born of God do not cross this Jordan and march through this Land of milk and honey, vineyards and orchards, forests of timber and mines of precious metal, and claim it and all its riches, as their own.

The last feature of the possible life in God is the privilege of entering within the rent veil and standing as priests and intercessors, immediately before the Mercy Seat. Prevailing prayer is so rare that it seems to be a lost art. Yet what unequivocal promises offer their crown to the suppliant believer ! " Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name " — can anything surpass that ! The only limitation to that universal " whatsoever/' is " in my name," which is seven times repeated for emphasis. * The Name stands for the Person, and to ask in His name is to ask by right of oneness, identification by faith, with Him; so that, in effect, He becomes the suppliant. Whoever authorizes me to proffer a request in His name, himself makes that request through me, and the party of whom it is asked sees him back of the petitioner. This is our Lord's last lesson in the school of prayer, as closet seclusion was the first ; and well it may be the last, for beyond it there is nothing more to be learned or enjoyed.

It is plain that very few, even among praying saints, do so prevail in prayer, and we all know it. Thousands of earnest petitions seem wasted, and, judged by results, are wasted. Either, therefore, God is untrue or man is unfaithful. The former supposition would be blas-

* John xiv.-xvi.

phemy; and we are driven to the conclusion that there is little real asking in Jesus' name. Here is the real core of the difficulty. Unbelief, disobedience, an alienated heart, separate the believer from Christ and the Spirit, so that the bond is practically ineffective; prayer in Jesus' name is too high a privilege and prerogative to be enjoyed without intimate union, a sympathy that Christ himself calls a symphony. * Symphony is musical accord, and implies chords, attuned to the same key and to each other and struck by an intelligent musician's hand. Even a saved soul may live a life so practically unbelieving, unloving, unsubmissive, that there is discord rather than concord — then such symphony becomes impossible, and the words " in Jesus' name " become a mere forrn, if not a farce.

The teaching of the word is unmistakable. James, and John, and Paul, complete Christ's lesson, and teach that it is only holiness of life which brings such accord with God as to make possible prayer in Jesus' name. While I continue in sin, neglect known duty, regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord can not hear me. Such a life sounds in His ear one long discord ; disobedience makes even prayer a new affront to God. But, so far as we are swayed by faith, love, obedience, zeal for God's glory, the Spirit groans within and our prayers find their way into Christ's censer, and come back in answers which are mingled with the fire from the altar above, t

The believing, obedient disciple may thus enter into the Holiest of all, and take his stand as a priest — note the meaning of the word — one who stands before God; he may come to the very Mercy Seat, claim the intercessor's right and place, and, like Noah and Job, Abraham and Moses,, Samuel and David, Elijah and Daniel, prevail with God. What wonder that the patriarch of Bristol, sixty-five years

* Matt, xviii. : 19. Greek, t Rom. viii. ; Rev. viii.

io FORWARD MOVEMENTS

ago, gave himself to a life of intercession that he might prove to an unbelieving world and a half believing church that God is a present, living, faithful prayer-hearing God !

We have thus, as briefly as was possible, outlined the holiness movement of our century. It is this life of sevenfold privilege, power, and blessing, that the Holy Spirit is urging upon God's people by many forms of appeal ; and the fact that extremes and errors now and then appear in connection with human advocacy of a holier life should not serve to obscure the fact that, underneath all the worthless driftwood that is borne on by this current, there is a deep, onflowing River of God.