"When thy soul is on the altar laid,
Guard it from each vain desire;
When thy soul the perfect price hath paid,
God will send the holy fire."
Do you lay all on the altar? "Whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift?" (Matthew 23:19). If you have everything on the altar, your feet, like the priest's in Joshua's day, are dipping into the brim of the Jordan. You are ready to pass over. Just pass on over! Call the transaction closed. Your heart feels a deep security in handing all over to God, and there is the witness of your own soul that you have, now, given up all and God accepts the offering.
What next? Ask God to purge your soul until He is satisfied concerning its purity. Ask Him to kill all the things which displease Him, and destroy the last remains of inbred sin. Ask Him to restore the image of God in your soul, to come in and possess His temple. Ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit, to let the Comforter take up His abode in you and abide with you forever. Swing wide open your heart's door to the Spirit. Believe that God does what He promised to do; believe He sanctifies you wholly. Since you are His, you are to trust Him to carry on this work in His own way. It is yours to yield and to believe. And we are "sanctified by faith" (Acts 26:18). Our hearts are purified by faith (Acts 15:8, 9). Let your faith wrap its arms around God's promise, and the work is done. Oh, marvelous grace of God!
CHAPTER THREE
THE JORDAN MEMORIAL STONE
One thing has always troubled me, and that is the witness of entire sanctification. How may one know all the time that He is sanctified? What is the witness to sanctification? Is it a feeling? an assurance? a peace? or what is it? Is it equally strong at all times, or does it come and go? If you can give me any information on this line, I shall greatly appreciate it.
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One of the things that Joshua commanded the Israelites to do at the crossing of the Jordan has always been intensely interesting and suggestive. It was not a miracle, and there was nothing marvelous about it; it was just a thing that any man could do. When the crossing was being made, Joshua selected twelve men, one from each tribe, to do a special service. After all the people had passed over and the twelve priests were standing still in the River's bed, with the ark of God, Joshua commanded the twelve men to go to the middle of the Jordan and each take up a stone, place it on his shoulder, and carry it across to the camp in Canaan. Here the stones were to constitute a memorial: "And these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel forever" (Joshua 4:7). Joshua also set up twelve stones where the priests' feet had stood in the River; but it is these stones on the bank in Canaan that are of most interest to us.
We shall call these stones the "stones of testimony." They testified to a great fact, a great miracle, a great crossing, to the beginning of a new era in the lives of those hundreds of thousands of Israelites. Whenever an Israelite saw those stones, he was reminded of this fact.
Now, dear, seeking soul, as you cross the Jordan of entire consecration, the line between the place where you are not wholly consecrated and where you are wholly consecrated, the line between the time when you hope to be sanctified and the time when you shall know you are, as you cross this, carry out your stone of testimony. You have never passed this way before, and you need not pass it again; so get your stone of testimony now.