How to see Jesus, with fulness of joy and peace

Introduction

" Sweet promptings unto kindest deeds Were in her very look ; We read her face, as one who reads A true and holy book ;

" Alone unto our Father's will One thought hath reconciled ; That He whose love excelleth ours Hath taken home His child."

IN one of our New England towns dwelt a minister of Christ, whose one solicitude was, to preach the gospel to every member of his parish. His wife was like-minded. They were both walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless, and were honored of God with great usefulness.

Mrs. Emily T. G. was anxiously waiting for the promise of the Saviour : " He that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him."

A friend put into her hand three little tracts, frank utterances of a heart happy in the love of Jesus. These heart-revealings moved her to comiV INTRODUCTION.

municate with the writer, and led to a correspondence which in part is here presented.

No apology is offered for the personalities permitted to remain. Said Rev. John Angell James, " If I have been of any considerable service to my people, it is owing very much to the habit of showing them my heart j of sharing with them the joys and sorrows with which God has fashioned my own life." We shall find apostolic precedent for this habit.

This, then, is a heart offering " from the heart to the heart " of those who are waiting for the promised manifestation of the Lord Jesus. John xiv. 21.

Preface To New Edition

Kind words from many parts of our own and from other lands, gratefully acknowledging help in seeing Jesus, and increase even to fulness of joy and peace in believing, impel me to renew the issue of this little book.

21 Somerset Street,

September i, 1880.

Contents

PAGB

I. Longing to see Jesus .... 7

II. The Earnest of the Spirit . . 13

I. Longing To See Jesus

** Long did I toil, and knew no earthly rest ;

Far did I rove, and found no certain home ; At last I sought them in His sheltering breast

Who opes His arms and bids the weary come ; With Him I found a home, a rest divine ; And I, since then, am His, and He is mine.**

I THANK you heartily for your kind letter. It makes me very glad to know that Jesus accepts my endeavor, and permits me to be helpful to any of His beloved ones. Your frank comments on the little Tracts encourage me to tell you something of the exceeding goodness of God which, led to the experience, and compelled my acknowledgment in the words of the Psalmist: " I delight to do Thy will, O my God ; yea. Thy law is within my heart. I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart ; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation.'' It may be that the dear Lord will use this declaration of His faithfulness to encourage and strengthen you.

It was on the 25 th April, 1831, I first found God real. From that day He has permitted no interruption to the friendship then so royally tendered j no cloud to come between my soul and Himself, the Sun of Righteousness. From my birth, and from my surroundings, it was a matter of course that I should receive line upon line, and precept upon precept; and yet, at nineteen, I had never once seen Jesus, nor the way to Him. I had been told in almost every form of utterance current in those days, that I ought to give my heart to Jesus. But, alas ! it was assumed by those who said it, that I knew what it was to give my heart to Him ; a most mistaken assumption. No doubt it was my own fault that I did not know. I wonder at my ignorance. But I wonder yet more, that those who really longed to lead inquiring souls to Jesus, should unconsciously leave me so utterly ignorant of the way. There was, however, this advantage in being so left ; I was compelled to appeal to Him alone, for instruction. I cried unto the Lord. I sought Him with my whole heart. I entreated Him to reveal Himself unto me, as the willing and able Saviour I could not but know Him to be. For a year or more He had been drawing me on to this serious, and now, at length, to this undivided search for Him. Now, truly. He bowed the heavens and came down. He put darkness under His

LONGING TO SEE JESUS. 9

feet. My darkness He scattered. At the brightness that was before Him, His thick clouds passed, and His presence stood confessed.

As I came down from the place of prayer, "'' found myself talking with the Holy Ghost, as with an honored, revered, beloved, self-invited Guest, who so won upon my heart that I could not but entreat Him not to leave me ; entreat Him to be my perpetual Guest.

Well might the poet sing : — -

" Like Morning, when her early breeze Breaks up the surface of the seas, That in their furrows dark with night, Her hand may sow the seeds of light, — Thy grace can send its breathings o'er The spirit dark and lost before ; And, freshening all its depths, prepare For truth divine to enter there."

So I found it. And thus enriched, I hasten to assure you that a like bounteous grace awaits your riper need.

No sooner had I thus received the promise of the Father, the indwelling Comforter, than I became vividly aware of strange differences in those who professed to be followers and servants of Jesus. All assented to the truths which were to be believed about Him ; all made confession of their faith in Him, and in much the same words ; but to most. He did not seem to be a person, and a friend. It was as though they had heard of Him lO HOW TO SEE JESUS.

by the hearing of the ear, but did not really knovt Him; did not conceive that He is knowable. I congratulate you that our dear Lord has filled you with the conception and the desire to know Him intimately. At the time I speak of, and long after, I was much perplexed over the question, What is this difference in Christians ? After a while our Lord's own words began to shed light upon it : " Many are called but few are chosen." Jesus said, '' Except ye.eat my flesh and drink my blood ye have no life in you;" they said, "This is an hard saying j who can hear it ? " Again it is said : " From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.'' When Jesus was arrested by the soldiers, ^^then all the disciples forsook Him, and fled."

To my apprehension it appears, from your own words, that you are of those who are both called and chosen of God; to be favored with His peculiar friendship. For this you hunger and thirst. You are not, therefore, a way-side hearer. The good seed has not fallen on stony ground, where there is not much depth of earth. Neither do I believe the cares of this world or the deceitfulness of riches choke the word. Your difficulty is of quite another kind. You are timid, and of a fearful heart. Here is a message of cheer for you : " Say to them that are of a fearful heart. Be strong, fear not, your God will come and save you."

Here is a song made ready to your need by another sister in Christ : —

LONGING TO SEE JESUS. II

" I cannot think but God must know About the thing I long for so ; I know He is so good, so kind, I cannot think but He will find Some way to help, some way to show Me to the thing I long for so."

Cherish the thought, dear friend. I am sure you will not be disappointed. You know Jesus says, " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.'' You are therefore blessed. You have received, in that hunger and thirst, a sure earnest of His promised manifestation of Himself to you. What if the vision tarry ? You have but to wait on the Lord. " He that shall come will come, and will not tarry." I cannot, with some, be swift to say, that all may come at once into full possession of that liberty and joy in Christ which you so earnestly desire. In the beginning of my new life I might have thought so. But, alas ! the evidence was soon forced upon me that the desire of many is neither deep nor strong. Jesus says of such, " they receive the word with joy, but have not root j they endure for a while, but when tribulation or persecution arise because of the word, they are offended." Assuredly all are invited, but all do not choose to come. They are not ready to serve the Lord with what costs them something. They are not prepared to honor Him with a self-consecration which may involve a risk. Of such as desire intimate association with

Him, He inquires, Are ye able to drink of my cup, and to be baptized with my baptism ? They reply, We are able j but they know not what they speak ; they have not carefully weighed what may be implied in it. Consciously or unconsciously they shrink ; such shrinking is unbelief ; they dare not commit their way unto the Lord. They have not sufficiently studied what He has said and done and suffered in their behalf; and therefore it is that they have not been fully persuaded of His love. They gain no clear vision, because it is only with the mind they seek Him. The heart must be aroused. " Then ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

II. The Earnest Of The Spirit

" O Love Divine ! that stooped to share Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear, On Thee we cast each earthborn care, We smile at pain when Thou art near.

" Though long the weary way we tread, And sorrow crown each lingering year, No path we shun, no darkness dread, Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near.

** On Thee we fling our burdening woe, O Love Divine, forever dear ; Content to suffer while we know, Living or dying, Thou art near ! "

DEAR Doctor T, H. Skinner, in his " Religion of the Bible," says : " There are three kinds of religion among those who call themselves Christians. Of one kind it were well if the world were destitute. Excepting by the observance of religious rites and solemnities, it does not distinguish the lives of those who practice it from the lives of irreligibus men. It is the form of godliness without its power; the religion which would serve at the same time two masters, would join light and darkness, Christ and Belial, believers and unbelievers together.

14 1^0 W TO SEE JESUS,

" There is another kind of religion which has been called the middle path of Christianity. It is the religion manifestly of the generality of those who are considered Christians. It embraces, besides a profession and the observance of ordinances, a belief of the doctrines, and an irreprehensible outward conformity to the duties of the Gospel. But it falls short of the privileges of the Gospel j not including those lively hopes and anticipations, those holy joys and sorrows, that sensible intercourse and fellowship with God and Christ, that enrapturing communion with the Holy Spirit, that vivid and permanent earnest and assurance of Heaven, which the Gospel warrants and encourages in every believer.

" A third kind of religion is that which does include these peculiar experiences. We would designate it Spiritual Religion."

The Doctor goes on to state at some length what would satisfy Christians of this class j and especially this : ** There must be a feeling of the Divine presence. If the light of God's countenance ceases at any time to shine upon the soul, the darkness which then covers it no outward prosperity can dispel ; its sorrows nothing can alleviate. No loveliness, no excellence remains, when the heart cannot taste the excellency of the knowledge of Christ."

It is plain to me that He has called you into this class. You long for the vision of Christ ; for the heart-sight and realization of Him as your present loving Lord. You know that some Christians are thus honored, and grieve that is not your happy experience ; but you question if it is for you. I, on the other hand, am persuaded that a careful survey of the evidence Divinely provided must convince you that the happy experience you crave is freely tendered you. That your earnest desire for the loving and loved friendship of Jesus is a sure token of this. It is the earnest of the Spirit, 2 Cor. i. 22, and V. 5 j Eph. i. 14. From the beginning God has sought the confidence and love of His creatures. He planted a garden in Eden, and in it He placed Adam. Out of the ground He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. He might have furnished man with simple instincts only, as He did the animals, and in so doing secured an unthinking and uninterested conformity to His own will. For our happiness, not less than for His own glory. He chose to create man in His own image; that is, with freedom of will ; with power to love and to hate, to perceive, reflect, compare, contrast, to choose, refuse, or to cooperate ; in short to live, in a measure more or less extended, on His own plane ; that is, in friendship, fellowship, and sympathy with God.

The perception of God's design and desire survives the disastrous result of Satan's plot to destroy all such Divine and human friendship. If Cain was a rebel, Abel was loyal After Abel came Enoch,

1 6 BOW TO SEE JESUS.

who walked with God, and won the sweet assurance that he pleased God. Need I remind you of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Daniel, Paul, John, and a glorious cloud of witnesses whose record attests the reality of this exalted fellowship ? To them God was entirely real and accessible. They knew and talked with Him as a friend. They aimed to please Him, and did not find Him hard to please. When they erred. He was very pitiful and of tender mercy. True these were exceptions to the multitude, but all were invited and commanded. Those who refused, did so on their own election. In the infancy of the race God entered into covenant with Abraham, for Himself and for all believers. The law given at Sinai contained no revocation of that covenant. Nay, it demanded the embodiment in daily life of the faith on which that covenant was based.

" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind, and strength," presupposes the closest intimacy with God in Christ. Without this, compliance is simply and utterly impossible.

I am sure, my dear friend, you must have remarked the growing conviction that average " Christian living" is unsatisfactory. It does not and cannot meet the need of earnest souls. The great majority of those who come to the table of our Lord own that Jesus is not realized as that personal present friend He declares Himself to be. To such, on their own confession, "prayer seems mere words in the air ; a feeble and disheartened groping in the dark." It is infinitely short of what Jesus promises: namely, ist. Forgiveness of sins, and freedom from condemnation, i John i. 7, 9 ; Rom. viii. i. 2d. Deliverance from the law. Rom. vi. 14, and viii. 2. 3d. Sonship. Rom. viii. 14-16. 4th. Fellowship. Rom. viii. 17; i John i. 3. 5 th. Holiness. Luke i. 74, 75 ; Rom. vi. 19, 22; Heb. xii. 10. 6th. Oneness with Christ. Rom. vi. 4, 6^ 8 ; Rom. viii. 9 ; Gal. ii. 20. 7 th. His peace. John xiv. 27. 8th. Indwelling and guidance of the Comforter. John xiv. 16, 17, 18, 26; John xvi. 13-15. 9th. Victory. John xi. 25, 26; i Cor. xv. 57. Here is the provision, Divinely made, that Christ may dwell in your heart by faith ; that you may comprehend His love, which passeth knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God. Eph. iii. 17-19.

In some vague, purposeless, and unsatisfactory recognition, it is generally admitted that this ought to be the experience of all believers. It could not well be denied. The Word of God has too many and too precise commands and assurances to permit the denial. By a limited number it is positively affirmed to be the one Christian experience proper to all ; and recognized by the godly in every age. A continuous, stable, intelligent, and unwavering faith, is felt to be the only faith that honors God. Illustrations of such faith are not wanting in our times. President Edwards and his wife, Brainard, Martyn, Dr. Payson, Muller, Josiah Bissell, Dr.

Wm. Goodell, Moody, and not a few less conspicuous Christians, are well known as exemplifying this life of continuous, conscious communion and fellowship with our Lord. It is a life of supreme and unquestionable devotion to Christ and His Church ; an intelligent and total surrender and gift of one's self to Christ, not alone to do, but also to be, and to suffer, everything He pleases j and this in all the hours and activities of common every-day life, as completely as in the church, and on the Sabbath. It is a simple, intelligent, hearty, matter of fact reception of the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, on the simple word of the Lord Jesus, as a constant, permanent, and most loving guest, adviser, guide, and friend. It is a heart-reception, that knows no unreality, and requires no sensuous impression. The Holy Ghost once thus received, is Christ in you ; Christ made real ; a reality incomparably transcending all material and all scientific illustration; a perennial fountain of joy; a deep well of peace; including the "persuasion that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate you from the love of Gpd, which is in Christ Jesus your Lord."

This life and experience is found in the children of God in every variety of circumstances ; in those' of few as well as in those of many talents ; the learned and the unlearned. To expect an equally intelligent and properly guarded account of their actual gain, from each of these, would therefore be unreasonable. We can sometimes accept and profit by a statement of facts when we can neither profit by nor accept an attempted interpretation of the facts. Thus, a most happy deliverance from spiritual bondage, actually received, might be very inaccurately reported, or mistaken for something more and other than the fact. Undoubtedly our Lord's oft repeated admonition, " If thou canst believe j all things are possible to him that believeth ; " was designed to call attention to that one special impediment, ever in our way, unbelief. But there are other hindrances, which may not be ignored. Thus, for example : " Justice and judgment are the habitation of Thy home ; mercy and truth shall go before Thy face." The first of these characteristics of our Heavenly Father are as carefully to be remembered as the other. And yet, dear friend, because of the present impossibility of bringing your daily life at once into entire conformity with the Divine standard, to conclude that your Father cannot regard you as a beloved child, is grievously to misjudge Him. If this were so, every conscientious Christian might well despair. The Gospel is indeed the glorious Gospel of the blessed God for penitent sinners. Our beloved brother Paul says : " And the grace " — that is, the undeserved favor — " of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whoni I am chief." And so when a disciple of Jesus is enabled to receive his Lord as his Immanuel, his salvation as a present and complete salvation, and to find the yoke of Christ easy and his burden light, is it any wonder if he, unaccustomed to use language with metaphysical exa'Ctitude, should seem to overstate what he has received ? Let no statement of this kind dishearten you. Appeal from and concerning it, to your loving Lord and He will surely guide you ; for so He promises.

So different is the free and joyous life of many a witness from the life he before groaned under, you cannot wonder if he hastens to conclude that " Christ is doing everything for him." For so indeed- He is j though not in contravention of His own declaration that " He works in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure."

But to some who cordially recognize a life in the very sunlight of the Divine love, as not an unprecedented thing, it seems a question if there be any true and well-warranted Christian state which may properly be called the rest of faith ; that peaceful and continuous assurance of Christ's intimate friendship and approving love, for which you sigh.

Alas ! but too distinctly do I remember the gall and wormwood of an endless succession of abortive endeavors to live in sinless loyalty to Christ. Who can count the resolutions broken, or who portray the painful sense of shamelessness, amounting to audacity, in even presuming again to ask forgiveness, with no assurance of doing better ? What but bitter waters could come of this ? And this came of halting faith ; lame for lack of realizing Jesus as the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world by the sacrifice of himself. Nevertheless, though missed by not a few, there is a peaceful, as well as a joyous, knowledge of God. The declaration, " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee," is not the proclamation of a mere mathematical point, or of an equatorial line, whose existence may not be denied, but which cannot be actualized. It may not please God immediately to bestow so great a gift. Delay may be needed to free the believer from temptation to rob God, by assuming that his own right arm hath gotten him the victory. " What hast thou that thou didst not receive ? " may be an ever-present and ever-needed reminder, designed to preclude all arrogance and self conceit ; and it is not difficult to conceive of great advantage to be derived from schooling our strong natural preferences into cheerful acquiescence in the will of God. Though forty years without a doubt of my sonship, and with the realization of Christ's presence and of His tender love never once suspended, somehow I missed that being " careful for nothing," to which He summons us. Like yourself, I was selfcondemned that I was not " kept in perfect peace."

Like yourself, I had been taught,' with much painstaking, the efficacy of Christ's atoning sacrifice. I knew that "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin/' I had earnestly offered this full salvation to not a few, and yet, after all this, I had not myself fully appropriated it.

If you ask, " How is this to be accounted for ? " I answer, I suspect the explanation to be, that I did not and could not at once receive the Word of God in utter simplicity. It came to me veiled and obscured in a cloud of human traditions and interpretations. Thus, when I read God's declaration of the efficacy of the blood of Jesus, that declaration was glossed with the suggestion. Take heed that you do not understand this literally, for though whatever the Lord says is true, in a general way, yet proper knowledge of yourself, and of your failings, should and will forbid you to believe that He cleanses you from all unrighteousness. For generations the prevailing teaching has been, that to be doubtful of our acceptance with God is on the whole safer, and less liable to mislead, than undoubting assurance. This is the verdict of average thought, belief, and experience. And on such experience doubtless it is as much as we have warrant to affirm. Those who live only, or chiefly in fear, must needs challenge a love which casts out all fear. They frankly own the imperfection of their love ; it has perhaps not occurred to them to suspect that their fear may be not less imperfect, and therefore equally unacceptable to God. All this befits a round of mere thought about religion and its requirements, discerning no " life with Christ in God." By the mouth of the Beloved Disciple, He says to us, " Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God." The intellect may condemn ; judgment and conscience may condemn j because, tried before their tribunal, I am found a sinner against God, exceeding sinful. And yet, thanks be to God, I may love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength; with a true and honest heart ; and so may you. I maybe loved by Him, most tenderly, and so may you, because so wondrous is the efficacy of the atoning sacrifice of Christ, that I am no longer under the law of Sinai. I have been taken into the grace of the Divine friendship, and so have you. Faulty as I know myself to be, my heart does not condemn me. I have confidence toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Both heart and mind appropriate the atonement as completely as the sunlight, air, and bread, as received and used for the life of the body. I am no more a stranger and foreigner, but a fellow citizen with the saints, and of the household of God. I begin to discern the mysterious fellowship which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ. I am strengthened with might by His spirit in the inner man. Christ dwells in my heart by faith. I am rooted and grounded in love, and so enabled

24 ffOW TO SEE yESUS.

to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth^ and length, and depth, and height, and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.

This is a true account of the issues from an honest, earnest walking with God, the normal and promised victories resulting from persistent fighting the good fight of faith. Must we then conclude that those who miss these issues are neither honest or earnest } By no means. Many who are both honest and earnest have been cheated of their birthright. " It pleased the Father that in Christ should all fullness dwell ; " also " that we might be filled with all the fullness of God."

Is not this Divine testimony corroborated by the facts of human life ? How is it in that friendship between man and man, which God has made the type of His own ? I am your friend. A very imperfect friend^ and yet an honest friend. Is there any insuperable impediment to loving an honest friend, one who in mind and heart is devoted to your interests, because he is not perfect?

My own judgment is, that some of those whom the Lord has made very happy and restful in Him, mistake in thinking that their fellow Christians universally, irrespective of natural gifts, irrespective of education and training, human and divine, may, if earnestly urged, instantaneously appropriate their proffered key, enter their door, and enjoy their happy relations to God. Nevertheless, there is for such as can and do rightly receive Christ a deliverance from bondage. For it is written, " As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God.'' " These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you." He does not say that every Christian will accept what He so freely gives. He does not say that all who desire will do this. He does say, ^^ Blessed are they that hunger and thirst, for they shall be filled."

No earnest, reverent Christian will, in express terms, question the Divine assurance : " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee." Yet, in effect, not a few do make void this grace of God. From their own experience, and by the prevailing testimony of their fellow-professors, they are persuaded that the Christian life is a continuous personal race ; a wrestling against principalities and powers ; an unending struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil \ a striving in the seldom, if ever, intermittent agony of personal combat, which permits no laying down of anxious solicitude for the result ; which endless struggling, disguise it as we may, is torment. Through fear of defeat, if not of death, such are all their lifetime subject to bondage.