I shall never forget the shock of mingled surprise and amusement and grief with which I heard a Captain loudly announce in one of my meetings many years ago that he was “going to preach holiness now,” and his people “have to get it,” if he had to “ram it down their throats.” Poor fellow! He did not possess the experience himself, and never pressed into it and soon forsook his people.
A man in the clear experience of the blessing will never think of “ramming” it down people; but will, with much secret prayer, constant meditation and study, patient instruction, faithful warning, loving persuasion, and burning, joyful testimony, seek to lead them into that entire and glad consecration and that fullness of faith that never fail to receive the blessing.
Again, the most accurate and complete knowledge of the doctrine, and the fullest possession of the experience, will fail us at last unless we carefully guard ourselves at several points, and unless we watch and pray.
3. We must not judge ourselves so much by our feelings as by our volitions. It is not my feelings, but the purpose of my heart, the attitude of my will, that God looks at, and it is that to which I must look. “If our heart condemns us not, then have we confidence toward God.” A friend of mine who had firmly grasped this thought, and walked continually with God, used to testify: “I am just as good when I don’t feel good as when I do feel good.” Another mighty man of God said that all the feeling he needed to enable him to trust God was the consciousness that he was fully submitted to all the known will of God.
We must not forget that the Devil is “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. xii. 10), and that he seeks to turn our eyes away from Jesus, who is our Surety and our Advocate, to ourselves, our feelings, our infirmities, our failures; and if he succeeds in this, gloom will fill us, doubts and fears will spring up within us, and we shall soon fail and fall. We must be wise as the conies, and build our nest in the cleft of the Rock of Ages. Hallelujah!
4. We must not divorce conduct from character, or works from faith. Our lives must square with our teaching. We must live what we preach. We must not suppose that faith in Jesus excuses us from patient, faithful, laborious service. We must “live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God”; that is, we must fashion our lives, our conduct, our conversation by the principles laid down in His word, remembering His searching saying, “Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in Heaven.”
This subject of faith and works is very fully discussed by James (chap. ii. 14-26), and Paul is very clear in his teaching that, while God saves us not by our works, but by His mercy through faith, yet it is that we may “maintain good work” (Titus iii. 14); and “we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph. ii. 8-10).
Faith must “work by love,” and emotion must be transmitted into action, and joy must lead to work, and love to faithful, self-sacrificing service, else they become a kind of pleasant and respectable, but none the less deadly, debauchery, and at last ruin us.
5. However blessed and satisfactory our present experience may be, we must not rest in it, but remember that our Lord has yet many things to say unto us, as we are able to receive them. We must stir up the gift of God that is in us, and say with Paul, “One thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward” (as a racer) “to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. iii. 13, 14, R.V.). It is at this point that many fail. They seek the Lord, they weep and struggle and pray, and then they believe; but, instead of pressing on, they sit down to enjoy the blessing, and, lo! it is not. The children of Israel must needs follow the pillar of cloud and fire. It made no difference when it moved—by day or by night, they followed; and when the Comforter comes we must follow, if we would abide in Him and be filled with all the fullness of God. And, Oh, the joy of following Him!
Finally, if we have the blessing—not the harsh, narrow, unprogressive exclusiveness which often calls itself by the sweet, heavenly term of holiness, but the vigorous, courageous, self-sacrificing, tender, Pentecostal experience of perfect love —we shall both save ourselves and enlighten the world, our converts will be strong, our Candidates for the work will multiply, and will be able, dare-devil men and women, and our people will come to be like the brethren of Gideon, of whom it was said, “Each one resembled the children of a king.”