I left Niagara, realizing, however, there was still something I had not got. I felt much as the blind man must have felt when he said, "I see men as trees, walking" (A. V.). I had begun to see light, but dimly.
The day after reaching home I picked up a little booklet, "The Life That Wins,"[2] which I had not read before, and going to my son's bedside I told him it was the personal testimony of one whom God had used to bring great blessing into my life. I then read it aloud till I came to the words, "At last I realized that Jesus Christ was actually and literally within me." I stopped amazed. The sun seemed suddenly to come from under a cloud and flood my whole soul with light. How blind I'd been! I saw at last the secret of victory—it was simply Jesus Christ himself—his own life lived out in the believer. But the thought of victory was for the moment lost sight of in the inexpressible joy of realizing Christ's Indwelling Presence! Like a tired, worn-out wanderer finding home at last I just rested in him. Rested in his love—in himself. And, oh, the peace and joy that came flooding my life! A restfulness and quietness of spirit I never thought could be mine took possession of me so naturally. Literally a new life began for me, or rather in me. It was just "the Life that is Christ."
The first step I took in this new life was to get standing on God's own Word, and not merely on man's teaching or even on a personal experience. And as I studied especially the truth of Christ's indwelling, victory over sin, and God's bountiful provision, the Word was fairly illumined with new light.
The years that have passed have been years of blessed fellowship with Christ and of joy in his service. A friend asked me not long ago if I could give in a sentence the after result in my life of what I said had come to me in 1916, and I replied, "Yes, it can be all summed up in one word, 'Resting.'"
Some have asked, "But have you never sinned?" Yes, I grieve to say I have. Sin is the one thing I abhor—for it is the one thing that can, if unrepented of, separate us, not from Christ, but from the consciousness of his presence. But I have learned that there is instantaneous forgiveness and restoration to be had always. That there need be no times of despair.
One of the blessed results of this life is not only the consciousness of Christ's presence, but the reality of his presence as manifested in definite results when, in the daily details of life, matters are left with him and he has undertaken.
My own thought of him is beautifully expressed in Spurgeon's words:
"What the hand is to the lute,
What the breath is to the flute,
What's the mother to the child,
What the guide in pathless wild,
What is oil to troubled wave,
What is ransom to a slave,
What is flower to the bee,
That is Jesus Christ to me."
The special Bible-study which I made at that time was embodied in a leaflet. Proving helpful to others, it is added below.[3]
God's Presence