G.D. Watson ~ Soul Food

Brief intro. Came across this little book by way of some blessed rabbit trail and having spoken with the brother who has it posted on his site and blog gladly forwarded his blessings on re-printing it here. His respective site(s);

[url=http://pilgrimspath.org/home.html]Pilgrim's Path[/url]
Blog: [url=http://pilgrimspathdaily.blogspot.com/]Pilgrim's Path Daily[/url]

Need mention it was by way of [url=http://www.wellofoath.com/home.asp]Well of Oath[/url] that I came across this gem that is to follow.

A short Bio on
[url=http://www.wellofoath.com/home.asp?pg=Bios&toc=G%2E+D%2E+Watson]George Douglas Watson[/url]

[b]SOUL FOOD[/b]

[i]A Book By G. D. Watson - A 19th Century Deeper-Life Author[/i]

[u]CHAPTER 1: "SOUL FOOD"[/u]

The soul has its appropriate food, and its mystical way of eating and digesting, just as the body. The soul feeds on truth and love, and the Divine personalities. It feeds on truth through the intellect; it feeds on love through the affections; and it feeds on Divine personalities through the choices and appropriations of the will.

1- [u]THE CONDITIONS OF SOUL-FEEDING[/u]:

These are, first, life; second, health; third, zest. In regeneration, the Christ-life is imparted to the soul. This life, like all other kinds, is known by its characteristics. All life is invisible and inscrutable. We may search all living substances, but no microscope has ever yet found what life is. It is a fathomless mystery, whether in vegetable, animal or spirit, and known only to God.

But we know that Christ can and does impart His life to the penitent, believing soul; and we know that this Christ-life can feed and grow and manifest itself similar to other kinds of life. It is not only needful to have this life, but to have it in a state of good soul-health. This implies the being cleansed from all moral disease, from all evil tempers and evil desires, from all self-will, and every principal of the carnal mind. Until the spiritual nature is thoroughly sanctified, its appetite is poor, its digestion is weak, and it craves a very light diet of religious food, made up largely of human intellectuality. For the soul to feed well, it not only needs life and health, but a lively zest of the faculties. This zest is acquired by practice, and by the quality of the food the soul takes in.

2-[u]THE MANNER OF SOUL-FEEDING[/u]:

In the mystical process of feeding the soul, perception of truth corresponds to eating, by which truth is taken into the mind. The more rapidly and clearly we apprehend all kinds of spiritual truth, the more largely do we eat; for just what taking food in the mouth and chewing it is to the body, the clear analysis and vivid apprehension of truth is to the soul; so that our perceptions are the mouth of the spirit. Faith is the digestive organ of the soul. It is by faith that the truth is dissolved and prepared to make living substance. A spiritual dyspeptic is one who has large perceptions of truth, but no adequate faith to digest it and turn it into experience. Just as the stomach of the body is often ruined by alcohol, tobacco and other poisons and stimulants, until its digestive organs are ruined, so the stomach of the soul is often ruined by mental stimulants, such as novels, philosophy, and false doctrines, until the digestive power of faith is well-nigh destroyed.

Love is the blood of the spiritual life. When the food in the stomach has been digested, it resembles milk; then it is conveyed into the lungs, where it is cooked by the oxygen of the air, and becomes beautiful red blood; it is then poured into the heart, and the heart, like a steam-pump, throws it all over the body, to build up the wasted organs.

The same process is carried on in the soul. Truth is perceived by the intellect, digested by faith, and through the constant in-breathing of the Divine Spirit this digested truth is turned into love, which constitutes the very life and substance of the spiritual man. Every atom of the body is made out of blood. In like manner, the very body of the true Christian is made of love!

There is one more step in this analogy, and that is as to what is termed the stored-up substance of the body. The human body will subsist for some weeks on its stored-up substance, which is mysteriously concealed in the flesh. When the body goes without food, the heart and brain, which are vital centers, will consume the reserved forces of the body and draw the substance out of the flesh until the body becomes a skeleton. Many persons have wondered where the flesh went when people have no food. The answer is the flesh gradually turned back into blood again, and flows back to the heart and brain.

Memory is that power in the soul which corresponds to this stored-up substance. Hence, when a good, healthy soul cannot attend good, religious meetings, or hear spiritual instruction, or have deep, spiritual reading, it has to live by memory on the stored-up nourishment which it has previously received.

You may ask, "Does not such a soul still have access to God in prayer?" I answer, Yes. Prayer is the very breath of the spiritual life, and breath is more essential to life than anything else; but as the body lives on three things - air, water, food - so the soul lives on three things - namely, prayer, the Holy Spirit, and the periodic feeding on freshly-apprehended spiritual truth. And though the body can live a good while on air and water, yet, if denied food, it will die. In like manner the soul of the believer may live on prayer and the Holy Spirit, but if it is cut off from the understanding of appropriate spiritual truth, it will pine, and the life be greatly weakened. For this reason, the best Christian people need the help of good, religious meetings, of Bible instruction, and of spiritual reading.

3-[u]ITS A LAW[/u]:

It is a law of all life to lay hold on foreign substances and turn them into itself. It is enough to make us stand in awe to watch the strange power which even the life of a plant has. The roots of every kind of plant or tree will seize upon the same gases and juices in the earth and transmute them into their several lives. The oak turns everything into oak, and out of the same substances the deadly nightshade turns everything into nightshade. The lamb converts the grass into lamb, and from the identical substances the wild ass builds up his life. The Omnipotent mechanism which intervenes between the one result and the other is simply a difference in the kind of life. This law holds true in spiritual life. The soul in which Satan reigns turns everything it eats into selfishness, and the soul which has been washed in Jesus' Blood and filled with the Christ-life will convert all that it eats into Christ-life. The same trials, bereavements, losses and sorrows which make one kind of life grow in fretting or in melancholy, or bitter and open rebellion, will make another kind of life grow in meekness and patient perseverance, and an inexpressible charity and sweetness of spirit. Everything depends on whether the self-life or the Christ-life has possession of us. There is a point in the Christian life where the whole being is so crucified and pervaded by the Holy Spirit, in spirit, soul, and body, that everything it comes in contact with, and every experience of joy and sorrow, and every treatment it receives from men or devils, becomes a means of Grace, and is turned into a mystical nourishment. There is such a thing as feeding on odors and outward bathings of milk and oil. It has been found that hungry persons get nourished by the smell of cooked food. Some winters ago the poor, hungry tramps of Chicago used to hang around the restaurants in such crowds that the police drove them away. Many of them testified that they desired to smell the odor of the cooked food, as it seemed to appease their hunger.

There is something analogous to this in the spiritual life. To a hungry soul there is an indescribable flavor and a mystical nourishment in good, spiritual singing, in being in the presence of good people, and even in looking in the face of a Spirit-filled person. A Christ- possessed soul has a mysterious, heavenly atmosphere around it, and this very atmosphere is electrified with a heavenly vigor.

The inner spirit of a perfect believer gets a nourishment out of the odors of Paradise; out of the majestic beauties of nature; out of the tender memories of the past; out of the flights of pure poetry; out of dreams and bright mental visions; out of storms and tempests, as sea- birds feed on the foam which the tempest churns out from the sea; out of the affinities of friendship; and even out of the antagonism of foes.

Oh, blessed be God for that all-devouring vortex of love which grinds grist from life OR death, from nature, grace, or glory, into that fine flour out of which angel's food is cooked! A soul in such a state will not only find food for itself out of every opening flower of grace and providence, but it will be a food-bearer to other hungry souls!

[u]CHAPTER 2: "A DEEPER DEATH TO SELF"[/u]

There is not only a death to sin, but in a great may things there is a deeper death to self - a crucifixion in detail, and in the minutia of life - after the soul has been sanctified. This deeper crucifixion to self is the unfolding and application of all the principals of self- renunciation which the soul agreed to in its full consecration. Job was a perfect man, and dead to all sin; but in his great sufferings, he died to his own religious life; died to his domestic affections; died to his theology; all his views of God's Providence; he died to a great many things which in themselves were not sin, but which hindered his largest union with God. Peter, after being sanctified and filled with the Spirit, needed a special vision from heaven to kill him to his traditional theology and Jewish high church-ism. The very largest degrees of self-renunciation, crucifixion, and abandonment to God, take place after the work of heart-purity. There are a multitude of things which are not sinful; nevertheless, our attachment to them prevents our greatest fullness of the Holy Spirit and our amplest co- operation with God. Infinite wisdom takes us in hand, and arranges to lead us through deep, interior crucifixion to our fine parts, our lofty reason, our brightest hopes, our cherished affections, our religious views, our dearest friendships, our pious zeal, our spiritual impetuosity, our narrow culture, our creeds and churchisms, our success, our religious experiences, our spiritual comforts; the crucifixion goes on till we are dead and detached from all creatures, all saints, all thoughts, all hopes, all plans, all tender-heart yearnings, all preferences; dead to all troubles, all sorrows, all disappointments; equally dead to all praise or blame, success or failure, comforts or annoyances; dead to all climates and nationalities; dead to all desire but for Himself. There are innumerable degrees of interior crucifixion on these various lines. Perhaps not one sanctified person in ten- thousand ever reaches that degree of death to self that Paul and Madame Guyon, and similar saints, have reached.

In contradistinction from heart-cleansing, this finer crucifixion of self is gradual; it extends through months or years: the interior spirit is mortified over and over on the same points, till it reaches a state of divine indifference to it. A great host of believers have obtained heart- purity, and yet, for a long time, have gone through all sorts of "dying daily" to self, before they found that calm, fixed union with the Holy Ghost which is the deep longing of the child of God. Again, in contradistinction from heart-cleansing, which is by faith, this deeper death to self is by suffering. This is abundantly taught in Scripture, and confirmed by the furnace experience of thousands. Joseph was a sanctified man before being cast into prison; but there the iron entered into his soul (see Ps 105:18 margin), and by suffering he reached the highest death of self. There are literally scores of Scripture passages, like Ps 71:19-21, teaching that the upper ranges in the sanctified state are wrought out through suffering. Perhaps the most remarkable passage of the Word on this subject is in Romans 5th Chapter; The first verse teaches full salvation by faith, the second verse teaches full salvation by faith, and verses 3-5 teach a deeper death and fuller Holy Ghost life of tribulation. When the soul undergoes this deeper death to self, it enters into a great wideness of spiritual comprehension and love; a state of almost uninterrupted prayer; of boundless charity for all people; of unutterable tenderness and broadness of sympathy; of deep, quiet thoughtfulness; of extreme simplicity of life and manners; and of deep visions into God and the coming ages. In this state of utter death to self, suffering, sorrows, pains, and mortifications of all kind are looked upon with a calm, sweet indifference. Such a soul looks back over its heart-breaking trials, its scalding tears, its mysterious tribulations, with gentle subduedness, without regret, for it now sees God in every step of the way. Into such a soul the Holy Spirit pours the ocean currents of His Own Life; Its great work henceforth is to watch the monitions and movements of the Spirit within it, and yield prompt, loving, unquestioning co-operation with Him. Such a soul has at last, in deed and in truth, reached the place where there is "none of self and all of Christ!"

[u]CHAPTER 3: "LOADED WORDS"[/u]

There is an indescribable quality about words, even when they are printed, but more so when they are spoken. Words are chariots in which the quality of the heart and mind ride forth to other souls. The dominant heart-quality of a person will possess and accompany his words with absolute precision. If the spirit of a man is superficial, or narrow, or time- serving, or selfish, or trifling, these qualities will pervade his words, in spite of all the seriousness or sanctity he may try to put into them, whether they are written or spoken. If the heart is large and filled with the broad, tender love of Jesus, and compassion for others, then the simplest expressions, which may seem common-place, will be freighted with these qualities. All words are loaded with the quality of the soul out of which they proceed. It is eternally impossible for God to utter one word that is not loaded with divinity; and, on the other hand, it is impossible for the devil to utter one word which does not, in some way, contain a lie. Words are like eyes. Some eyes are inquisitive; others are pleading; others are brave; others are searching; others are mild and tender; and still others are low and mean. There is an invisible stream of soul-quality that flows out from people's eyes, and there is no way in the world to change the quality of that stream except by changing the eye, and the only way to change the eye is to change the immortal spirit that looks out through the eye.

This same thing is true of words. Our words are the eye-balls of the heart, in which others see the quality of our minds. The apostle speaks of "our words being season with salt;" and Jesus tells us that we must "have salt in ourselves." In one sense, salt is sweeter than sugar, and far more essential to the chemistry of our blood than sugar is. Hence, salt is a type of the indwelling-Christ in us; and it is when we are salted through and through with the blessed Holy Ghost that our words will be seasoned with the real Christ-life. Our words cannot be loaded with the Holy Spirit after they leave our lips. If God is in them, they must proceed out of the Holy Spirit element in us. The drops of blood, or tears, that you may shed, all contain salt; but that salt is in the stomach and the heart before it is in the blood- drops or the tear-drops. In like manner, if our words have a savor of life and power in them, they must get that quality from the inner depths of our spirit before they drop from our lips or our pens. Jesus teaches that our words reveal our heart-character, and says, "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." If we speak or write in the Holy Spirit, our words will be loaded with light. There will be a transparency and straight forward simplicity in them like unto clear glass. They will not be spoken for ostentation, or for sound, or in guile, or with double meaning. All such words are opaque.

Many a sermon is so preached, and many a religious book so written, that instead of revealing the truth to the simplest understanding, it obscures it. The only use of words is to make the thought easily and perfectly intelligible, and when the Holy Spirit inspires them, they are like balls of clear glass, in which the very core of the thought can be seen and comprehended. Another peculiarity about words loaded with the Spirit is an inexpressible warmth and magnetism in them. They seem to quiver with a heavenly electricity; they vitalize the mind; they penetrate the understanding; there is a love-quality in them, like the pungent, penetrating heat of sweet spices and aromatic oils. A piece of cedar-wood or sandal-wood will give forth a sweet, pungent odor for hundreds of years; and so there is a hot, burning flavor in the words which have come from minds aflame with divine love. It often happens that a person devoid of interior flame of the Holy Ghost will try to put a pathos or an unction into their prayers or sermons or conversation; but in spite of all their efforts, their words are insipid milk and water, chilly and powerless, because they have not come from an interior furnace. It is only a painted fire, which dazzles the eye and freezes the hearer. The Holy Spirit alone can put into our words that burning, warming sensation which kindles other souls into fervor. Only notice, when some person speaks in a religious meeting under the melting, burning love of Jesus, how their words strike the mind like a warm south wind in early spring; notice how the congregation listen to catch every word; how the fiery stream of speech will evoke a pleasant smile, or a flowing tear, or awaken conviction, or a sense of joy; every mind in the congregation which loves the truth will be wide awake; there is a warmth in the expression of the people's eyes, and if you could see into their intellects, it would resemble a flower-garden blossoming into bright and glowing thoughts, and their affections melted into sweetness. Those burning words are being shot like red-hot bullets from a divine magazine of a fire-baptized heart. In comparison with such words, all human eloquence is like cold moonbeams on a frozen sea.

Another characteristic of Holy Ghost loaded words is a divine fitness in them as to time and place and matter. God often arranges to have His Spirit-led children speak words in such a juncture of circumstances, or at such times, and in such a tone of voice, as the speaker did not premeditate, which will have accomplished vast and everlasting results. People will often say that you spoke a certain word to me years ago, under such and such circumstances, which made a great change in my life. Here is a young lady physician who has packed her trunk to leave a certain camp-meeting. She is invited to lead a young peoples meeting. An evangelist standing by, in an unpremeditated way, simply says: "Sister, the Lord wants you here; go, unpack your trunk, and lead that meeting." The words are loaded; they pierce the heart. The young lady leads the meeting, and from that time on becomes a holiness evangelist.

A certain man is holding a meeting in North Georgia. A brother steps us and says: "I met you ten years ago in Augusta, when I was seeking sanctification, and walking in the street, I asked you several questions. You simply answered me, 'Brother, just leave yourself in the hands of Jesus, and He will answer all your questions.' Your words were loaded, and in a few moments I was in spiritual liberty." There are millions of instances where words have been spoken, under the guidance of the Spirit, just in the nick of time to accomplish great results.

Another quality about loaded words is that of durability; they have in them the element of immortality. Common-place words, spoken out of the mere creature, glide away from us by the million; but certain words, appropriate to our needs, and charged with the Spirit, bury themselves in our memories, and remain fresh with us through life.

Many years ago, I met an old negro, about a hundred years old. In his conversation, he said: "Man tell something you forgit; God tell you something you no forgit!" I have often thought of that expression. If we want our prayers, or sermons, or testimonies, or written words, to abide in everlasting fruitfulness, they must be in the order of Divine will and under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. Some persons try of set purpose to speak wise and appropriate and powerful words. But all such is a failure. You can't speak loaded words by trying to, or for the occasion; it is only by having the very fountains of our being so melted and filled and united with the Holy Spirit that, without any premeditation or set purpose, every stray shot and our ordinary conversation will be just as full of holy gravity and fiery truth as our prayers and sermons. The power must be generic, and continually flowing through us from the indwelling Christ. A trifling preacher during the week cannot speak fiery and weighty words on Sunday. Let us in secret prayer bathe ourselves so long in the bright and warm presence of Jesus that when we go forth we shall unconsciously carry in our manners and words that inimitable quality of life and durability which can come alone from the Eternal One.

If in the past our words have been lacking in the Divine aroma of Grace, let us go to the fountain and, by persevering prayer, get in such abiding relation with the real source of all holiness as to make our very words conductors of heavenly electricity. Our infinite, loving God will gladly utilize any little humble one on this earth as a channel of holy fire, if they will utterly yield themselves up to His will and the current of the Holy Spirit.

[u]CHAPTER 4: "PERSONAL LOVE OF JESUS"[/u]

We have a revelation of God's personal feelings in the very nature of the first great commandment, that we are to love Him with all our heart.

The complaint that Jesus had against the church at Ephesus was their lack of fervent, personal love for Him; they had "works" and "labor" and "patience", and great zeal in searching out heretics, and in bearing persecution and the scorn of their neighbors, and had not fainted under hardships.

If such a list of graces were now found in one person, he would be esteemed a great saint; and yet the Infinite Searcher of hearts saw the lack of something for which all these massive virtues could not atone; and that was a warm, deep, incessant, cleaving, tender passion of soul for the person of the Lord Jesus.

Very few Christians reach such an intimacy with our dear Lord as to receive and appreciate His individual feelings. Jesus is an infinite lover, and nothing will satisfy Him but a pure, sacred, passionate, and personal love. He loves to be loved. He loves those most who have the most personal affection for Him. There are so many things that are eminently religious, and brave, and enterprising, and reformatory, which display great zeal and orthodoxy, but which do not satisfy the longings of our Savior's heart.

There are so few Christian that are positively affectionate with Jesus. Personal love of Jesus is marked by several characteristics:

(1) It is a unique and undefinable love for His Person as the God-man. When we are filled with the Spirit, there will be unfolded in our minds a fixed apprehension of each person in the Godhead; and there will be individual love for each person in the Godhead, and a sweet, peculiar adoration and affection and worship for the Father and for Christ, and for the Holy Spirit. And there is something in our love for each of the Divine persons which is peculiar to their personality. I such a state, our love for Jesus is the blending of love for the eternal Son and the sacred humanity, so this affection is composed of the most ardent attachments which a creature can have for his God, and the strongest attachment which one creature can have for another.

The human soul and sacred body of Jesus are the highest of all things in the creation of God. His suffering and death render Him the most precious creature in the universe, both to Father and to us; and when this is joined with the Eternal Logos, Who was our Creator, it puts Him in such relation to us that we can love Him with a kind of love as we cannot have toward another person. It is this compound love, this blending of affections, like the composition of the sweet spikenard, which Jesus wants us to pour forth on Him.

We can love Jesus with more different kinds of affection than any other person in the universe. Look at the number of tender relationships that He sustains toward a soul that is perfectly wedded to Him by the Holy Spirit. As our Creator, we adore Him; as our Redeemer, we boundlessly trust Him; as our King, we obey Him; as our Judge, we fear Him; as our Master, we submit to Him; as our Savior, we praise Him; as a little Infant, we feel a fatherly and motherly love toward Him; as a Brother, we feel a brotherly and sisterly love for Him; as our spiritual Bridegroom, our hearts are passionately devoted to Him.

Every relation that He sustains to us calls forth a new form of love. There is no kind of affection possible to the human soul which Jesus should not receive. See in how many ways Eve was related to Adam; being builded out of his rib, she was his own daughter, and at the same time his own sister, and at the same time his bride; and he being the lord of the human family, she was his servant, and all these relations entered into her affections for him.

Jesus is to us, in a similar way, all that Adam was to Eve, with a great deal more besides. Now do we love our precious Lord in all these relationships! Is our love for Him an ever- flowing stream, which is made up from all these several rivulets? There is no one in the universe, to a divinely-illuminated mind, so lovable as our blessed, Divine Jesus.

(2) Personal love for Jesus has in it the extremes of the most sacred fear and the most child- like familiarity. Some people think that those who have much sacred fear can not have much love; and, on the other hand, that those who have a fond familiarity of love can not have a reverential fear; but such people are greatly mistaken. Fear and love are the two equal wings to this soaring devotion. Those who have an awe which in the least hinders their love, have a slave's awe, and not that of a child. There is nothing more beautiful in the interior life than that sacred awe, that sweet and sacred dread, which the soul feels in the presence of its Lord. When we gaze at His beautiful and blazing majesty, when our whole soul feels a gentle trembling before Him, there is something in the very holy dread that draws us to a deeper and more tender love.

And, on the other hand, there is a spotless familiarity which the soul can take with Jesus - a boldness and liberty of thought and speech - which only serves to make our worship more true, so that, in reality, sacred fear and familiar love act and react on each other.

(3) Personal love of Jesus is indicated by an extreme sensitiveness for His honor. The soul feels an insult at every dishonor that is shown to its Divine Husband. When Jesus is wounded, His Name lightly used, His majesty disregarded, His precious Blood ignored - when He is treated irreverently, or when He is in any way dishonored as to His person or merits or claims - this hot personal love will feel a delicate, divine indignation.

The heart is as sensitive to the preciousness and the honor of Christ as the apple of the eye. The truly wedded soul is very touchy as to the glory of its husband. And, on the other hand, this kind of love is always elated and happy at every advancement of Christ's glory. It loves to see Him extended; it glories in the spread of His glory.

(4) This kind of love has an incessant yearning for all the dispositions manifested in the Life of Jesus. This personal love of Jesus has large, bright eyes, and from the New Testament records it can see marvelous things in the Christ-life. It has vast and penetrating visions into the depths of His Lowliness, the vastness of His Charity, the tenderness of His Spirit, the perpetual self-sacrifice of His Will, the absolute courage of His Obedience, the everlastingness of His Kindness. It sees His whole inner life, like a magnificent city, all lit up with unspeakable Attributes, and all bespangled with majesties and virtues and graces and sweetnesses, that charm and bewilder the soul, and make it leap with intensest desire to possess everything which it sees in its lovely Lord. No splendor in creation can compare with the dazzling charms which an ardently loving soul perceives in Jesus. It cries out, with St. Paul, "Oh, the depth of the riches!" It is this vision which makes the soul pine and pray, and weep loving tears, and dream over and over of the ineffable transformation of being made just like the heavenly Bridegroom.

(5) This form of love is strongly attached to the possessions of Christ. There is a peculiar attachment which always goes with the possession of a thing. It is the affection of ownership. As soon as anything becomes our property, we have a peculiar attachment, which never could exist previous to ownership. This is why Jesus Said, "Where your possessions are, there will your heart be." He does not say the possessions will go where the heart is, but the heart will go where the possessions are! Hence the soul in perfect, loving union with Jesus will find itself taking hold of all His personal kingdom and all His property, as a young queen finds the affections of her heart stretching out to all the subjects and enterprises of her king's dominion.

(6) I should not omit to say that this personal love for Jesus has in it a fond, caressing spirit for Him. It twines its thoughts around Him. It folds Him round and round with the delicate embraces of the spirit. It often finds itself, like John, leaning on His breast; or, like Mary, sitting at His feet; or, like Magdalene, bathing His feet with tears; and whatever posture the body may be in, the soul is often on its face before Him in perfect, penitential tenderness.

(7) The love of Jesus would not be complete if it did not include a longing for His personal Appearing, and to see Him come in the Glory of His Kingdom. The Holy Spirit Loves Jesus with an Infinite Love, and He alone can flood our being with fervent Love for Christ; and the Holy Ghost has told us that we are to "Love Christ's Appearing." St. Paul speaks of a crown of righteousness for all those who love our Lord's Appearing. Any Love for Jesus which does not include an intense desire to see and be WITH Him is below the standard of affection which He requires of us. They please Him most who Love Him personally and ardently up to their capacity.

[u]CHAPTER 5: "LUKEWARMNESS"[/u]

The very thought of lukewarmness implies that the soul has previously been in a good, hot state of grace. Persons who have never known a good degree of fervor, either in a justified or a sanctified state, will never have the malady of lukewarmness. It is like pestilential insects, which attack thrifty, living vegetables, and not dry, dead sticks. We never think of a dry, rainless desert suffering from drouth. The very thought of suffering from drouth implies that the ground has previously been well watered.

It often happens that those who have been the most richly blessed with divine grace, and who have been lifted into fervent love, will imperceptibly decline into lukewarmness. Very few Christians on earth entirely escape this miserable tepidity altogether. One of the worst features about lukewarmness is that it steals on the soul in such quiet, respectable ways. If the horrible thing had horns and hoofs, and a smack of criminality in it, it would alarm the soul; but, as a rule, lukewarmness of spirit is so decent and well-behaved, that it chloroforms its victim and kills him without a scream of terror. This is what makes it so awfully fatal. While open sin slays in hundreds, nice, respectable lukewarmness slays in tens of thousands!

Could we get a vision of a soul that has been aglow with sanctifying grace, as it was beginning to get lukewarm, we would see a heart seemingly spotless and empty, with the heavenly dove and the good angels just on the outside, but with their faces turned away from it, as if about to leave; and, on the other hand, we would see unclean beasts and birds on the outside of the heart, but with their faces turned toward it, as if about to enter. We would see the eyes half closed, as if about taking a nap, and a dull, expressionless mouth, reminding us of a winter fireplace where the fire burns low. Oh, could the soul but see the awfulness of such a condition!
Lukewarmness is indicated by a negligence in acts of piety, and a carelessness in fixed habits of devotion; such as daily reading God's Word, regular seasons of prayer, constant guarding of our conversation, seasons of fasting, and habits of divine and healthy meditation. There is not only a carelessness in the performing of these acts, but a dullness of spirit, a slovenness of mind, in the doing of them. As nearly all tightrope-walkers and lion-tamers sooner or later get killed in their foolish game by a little carelessness, so many Christians fall from elevated grace, and are devoured by lions, through a thoughtless and careless spirit in Christian duty.

Another symptom of lukewarmness is trusting to the magic of former grace. The soul has experienced, by an instantaneous regeneration, or an instantaneous sanctification, such floods of light and love as seem to sweep it out on an irrestible tide, and everything religious seems so easy, that everything works like a charm. But this very flood-tide of holy ease becomes a snare to the soul. It leans upon these instantaneous blessings to work by a sort of magic, and to take the place of patient, thoughtful perseverance. There are hundreds who are expecting the mere blessing of sanctification to take them through, and do not perceive that the chilling frost is settling down in the edges of their souls. It is as if a captain of a fine ship, after getting her out to sea, with the sails all set, and fairly in the wind, should lash the helm, and tell the crew they might take a holiday, expecting the wind and the ship, the chart and the compass, to do the balance. There are more souls doing this than we can dream of. [see "The {lukewarm} Captivation Of Nonchalance --or-- The Seduction Of Mediocrity --or-- The Addiction Of Indifference!", in "topical essays #1"]

Another element in lukewarmness is a sort of indefinite contentment with the present level of spiritual life. There is a quiet, unexpressed decision of the mind that the soul is getting on very well, and that it will settle down to its present thought and feelings. Most Christians have quietly decided to live the remainder of their days just about like they are now doing. They expect no further great epochs in their experience.

A great many holiness people are so afraid of what resembles a third blessing that they expect no great widening deluges of the Spirit, but nestle down in the thought that if they can only keep a clean heart, they will never bother themselves about the ocean-depths of boundless, melting, fiery love. Such souls are already on the decline, and do not know it. Their spiritual life resembles a quiet, lazy, drowsy summer Sunday afternoon. They feel the Saturday night's work has been well done up; and they can't bear the thought of the duties of Monday morning, and so spend the time napping. Even holiness preachers settle down into this Sunday afternoon condition, with just enough spiritual fervor to brush the summer flies away.

It is amazing how few Christians are seriously determined to get beyond their present experience; and of course they do not get beyond. And this lukewarmness manifests itself by a disposition to criticize as heretics those who do push beyond. The legalist suspicions the man as being erratic who knows his sins are forgiven. The merely converted man looks upon the fully sanctified with a good deal of suspicion, and even many who are sanctified regard any greater enlargements in the Holy Ghost life as bordering on heresy. And so it goes on. Will there ever be any end to the narrowness and the littleness of our minds and faith?

Another element in lukewarmness is the secret fact in the mind that the soul has done so much for God, has fought so many battles, endured so many afflictions, had so many uplifts of grace, that it can put itself on the retired list of the army and draw fully pay. This is a very subtle disposition, and the soul hardly dares to whisper it to itself, for the conscience feels its meanness is like the gunpowder plot, which must not be breathed: and yet, where is the saint who has known much of God, into whose mind this low, sneaking thought has not crept? God only knows how many of His children, once hot with holy love, are living, like broken-down aristocracy, on the faded splendors of the past. Their experiences resemble faded photographs, or the withered flowers that were used at last week's funeral.

Another feature in lukewarmness is the hidden complaint which the soul takes to itself, that glowing fervor is only a juvenile thing which is outgrown, and that it is now "serving God on principle." All states of toning down in spiritual life are accompanied by some sort of self-complacency. When the soul begins to think less of God, and of the precious Blood, and of the Holy Ghost, it begins to think of itself.

This thought of serving God on cold principle indicates a sad state: it may not be ruinous to one's life, but it is ruinous to deep spirituality. One of the worst things about it is its respectability. It keeps in the beaten path of decent religion; no one can lay any charge against it; it can pass in and out around any circle of Christians; it does nothing to call down severe rebukes; it is an old, sober, well-behaved thing, keeping on good terms with everybody and everything in general. If only something terrific would happen to it; if it could be hurled to the dust in humiliation and mortification; if it could only be set weeping and wailing, it would be an infinite advantage to it. But such a miserable state of the soul is so pleasing to the devil that he will not even tempt it to commit any great sin, lest it should be shocked into renewed repentance and fervor of grace. The devil likes to bury hot religious experience in a smooth shroud of cold virtue.

There is one more symptom of lukewarmness, and that is a dull sense of breaking with God. The heart feels that something is not just right. The orthodoxy is all right; the outward life may be correct; the verbal testimony kept up; and all Christian duties in a general way looked after; but the animating spirit is weakened. There is no conscious touch from God; no sense of fullness dilating the heart; no sweet vision of God's Attributes; no bright, far- away fields open to it in secret prayer; no lowly feeling of kissing the Savior's feet; no rapt adoration of His Majesty; no sweet hymns vibrating in the mind during the sleep; no melting, yearning love for the saving of souls; no spells of divine laughter rippling through the mind; no bullet-like piercing of the words of Scripture; no whispering of the Holy Ghost as of old; no conscious grasp on the Throne through prayer.

The flash has left the eye; the smile from the lip; the divine throb from the heart; the promptness has left the will; the gentleness has left the voice; the third heavens, with its retinue, have gone off somewhere. Some unpleasant, undefinable, unexplorable something has settled on the inner spirit; it has ceased to feel toward Jesus as a real Lover; it is getting offensive to the Holy Spirit; and unless something can be done to rekindle its fading fires, it will nauseate the Infinite Heart, and Christ will spew it out of His mouth! This is an awful metaphor, and indicates the awfulness of lukewarmness.

*(Footnote: Essay's added, see http://pilgrimspath.org/essay_index.html)

[u]CHAPTER 6: "FEEDING OUR FAITH"[/u]

Inasmuch as faith is the condition of all spiritual life, of the entrance into that life, and the steps to progress in that life, it behooves us to give it all the nourishment possible. Faith can be strengthened, and fed, and thus will grow; but the growth of faith is often very opposite to our notions concerning it. We often suppose that faith is made strong by receiving great encouragement, by having quick and abundant answers to prayer, by high states of joy, by lofty visions of divine things; but in reality these do not strengthen our faith as much as we fancy. Our faith is to be nourished on the promises of God. Those promises are contained in His written Word. They may be also promises communicated to the soul by the Holy Spirit, or through other souls that are in close fellowship with God, and who may speak to us great promises of what God has told them concerning us.

When God first called Abraham, He inundated his soul with a sea of Promises; he spoke to him from the starry heavens, and from the soil of Canaan on which he walked, and by the visits of Angels, and by the Holy Ghost in the deep of his nature. Abraham saw great fields of Light - great possibilities of things for himself and his posterity. His soul drank in these Promises, until his Faith became wide and powerful, even before any of them were fulfilled. God deals with souls in a similar way; yet when He calls anyone to great degrees of perfection or of usefulness, He begins by opening up to him the Promises of His Word, and the possibilities which they may achieve, even before there are any outward symptoms of their fulfillment. The heart that anchors itself in the Promises of God, until those Promises become as real as God Himself, will have strong Faith.

Another nourishment to Faith is the removing from the soul of natural and human props. Naturally we lean on a great many things in nature, and society, and the Church, and friends, more than we are aware of. We think we depend on God alone, and never dream of how much we depend on other things, until they are taken away from us, and if they were not removed, we should go on, self-deceived, thinking that we relied on God for all things. But God designs to concentrate our Faith in Him alone by removing all other foundations, and, one step after another, detaching us from all other supports. There are many souls which cannot endure this utter desolation of secondary supports, which would be more than they can bear, and they would react into open rebellion; so God allows them to have a "junior-faith", and to lean on other things more or less. But to those who are able to undergo the strain of Faith, He allows all sorts of disappointments -- the death of bright hopes, the removing of earthly friendships or destruction of property, the multiplied infirmities of the body and mind, the misunderstanding of dear ones, until the landscape of religious life seems swept with a blizzard, to compel the soul to house itself in God alone!

At the time that the soul is having all secondary supports removed, it does not perceive what is taking place within itself, but afterwards it finds that faith has been growing and expanding with every wave that has beat against it. Faith grows when we least expect it; storms and difficulties, temptations and conflicts, are its field of operation; like the stormy petrel seabird on the ocean, Faith has a natural glee in the howling of the storm and the dash of the spray.

Faith not only is nourished by the removal of earthly props, but by the seeming removal of divine consolation. Our answer to prayer seems too long delayed, and Faith is tested to its uttermost, when it seems as if the Lord has turned against us and all we can do is to continue holding on, with the pitiful cry of "Lord, help me!" Even then faith is expanding and growing beyond all we are aware of, by the very extension of the delay of the answer. The longer the Lord delayed in answering the prayer of the woman of Syropgoenicia, the more her Faith became purified and intense. Long delays serve to purify our Faith, till everything that is spasmodic and ephemeral and whimsical is purged out of it, and nothing is left to it except Faith alone. [It has been said that the true test of any saint is Waiting! See Lk 21:19]

Another nourishment to Faith is to get before the mind the great Faith of other people -- to read the lives of those who have been sorely tried, and who have believed God against all odds. Faith kindles Faith; by understanding how God has dealt with other souls enables us to interpret His dealings with us. Our Faith is Inspired by reading the trials of the Bible saints more than by reading the pleasant and easy things.

Another nourishment to Faith is that mode of dealing with us by which the Lord is constantly changing the providential channels through which He sends blessings to us. If God's blessings flow on us in a certain way, for any length of time, we unconsciously fix our trust on the way the Benefactions come, more than on the invisible Fountain. If the Lord gave the Jews water in the wilderness, sometimes it was from the rock, and sometimes it was from a well dug in the dry sand. (see Num 21:16-18) When God sends us great spiritual refreshings, He will change the circumstances under which they come; when He sends temporal blessings in answer to prayer, He will change the channels through which they flow. He does not want us to become attached to any mode or phenomenon. He wants our Faith perfectly united to Himself, and not to his mode of doing things, and hence He will disappoint us on the old lines of expectation, and reveal His favors from a new quarter, in a new way, and surprise us with some great and sweet device of His infinite Wisdom. And thus our Faith is strengthened by disappointment, until it reaches such perfect union with God that it never looks to any body, or any thing, or any mode, or any old channel, or any meeting, or any set of feelings, or at any time or season; but keeps itself swung free from all these things, and dependant on God alone. This degree of Faith can never be disappointed, can never be jostled, because it expects nothing except what God Wills, and looks to no mode except Infinite Wisdom. Its expectation is from God only.

[image][img align=left]http://divinity.lib.vanderbilt.edu/ARIL/GDWatson.jpg[/img] [u]CHAPTER 7: "THE BENEFIT OF DEEP CRUCIFIXION"[/u]

The word crucifixion, as it applies to us in a Christian sense, may be defined as any pain or suffering which renders us dead to sin or to self, or to the things of time and sense. There may be many kinds of sorrow and suffering which do not serve the purpose of true crucifixion.

In order that suffering may be a thorough mortification to us, it must be put in the Will of God, and yielded to the operation of the Holy Spirit. When we yield ourselves absolutely up to God, and trust Him to take charge of every particle of our being and life and circumstances, it is then that His Omnipotence takes gentle and firm possession of all our trials and sufferings, and makes them work a true crucifixion in us.

It does not matter what the occasion of the suffering may be. It may come from our own sins, or poverty, or ill-health, or loss of friends, or separations, or terrible and protracted temptations, or assaults of evil spirits, or the hatred of others, or great disappointment, or divine-chastisements; it may come from many of these sources; but let it come from any cause in the universe, if we give it over entirely into the hands of God, and sink ourselves into His Will, with a perfect desire for Him to Work His best Will in us, He will make every pain, every groan, every tear, every particle of our suffering, work in us a death to sin and to self, and to all things on earth which will be for our highest perfection and for His Glory.

The depth and the power of the spiritual life in every person depends exactly upon the degree of their crucifixion. There is a divine mystery in suffering, a strange and supernatural power in it, which has never been fathomed by the human reason. There never has been a great saintliness of soul which did not pass through great suffering. There is such a thing as suffering reaching a state of perfection. When we suffer so sever and so long that we become dead to it, and divinely indifferent as to how much we suffer or how long it will continue; when the suffering soul reaches a calm, sweet carelessness, when it can inwardly smile at its own suffering, and does not even ask God to deliver it from the suffering, then it has wrought its blessed ministry; then patience has its perfect work; then the crucifixion begins to weave itself into a crown.

It is in this state of perfection that the Holy Spirit Works many marvelous things in our souls. In such a condition, our whole being lies perfectly still under the hand of God; every faculty of the mind and will and heart are at last subdued; a quietness of eternity settles down into the whole being; the tongue grows still, and has but few words to say; it stops asking God questions; it stops crying, "Why hast Thou forsaken me?"; the imagination stops building air castles, or running off on foolish lines; the reason is tame and gentle; it stops debating and quits all dogmatism; the will ceases from its own activity; the bluster and zeal of self-action is taken out of it; the choices are annihilated; it has no choice in anything but the purpose of God. The affections are weaned from all creatures and things; it loves nothing but God and God's Will in any given thing; it has no private ends to serve; it has no motives except to please God; it is so dead that nothing can hurt it, nothing can offend it, nothing can hinder it, nothing can get in its way; for, let its circumstances be what they may, it seeks only for God and His Will, and it feels assured that God is making everything in the universe, good or bad, past or present, work together for its good. Oh, the blessedness of being absolutely conquered! of losing our own strength, and wisdom, and goodness, and plans, and desires, and being where every atom of our nature is like placid Galilee under the Omnipotent feet of our Jesus.

Among great blessings resulting from sanctified suffering, is that it gives a great wideness to the heart, and a universality of love. This uttermost crucifixion destroys the littleness and narrowness of mind; it gives an immensity to the sympathies, and an ocean-like divine love, which is beyond words. This is because creature-love is crucified, and divine love floods the whole being. It is as if every drop of blood had been drawn out of the body, and the Blood of a Divine Being had been poured into all the veins! [see also, "My Veins, His Blood!"; in the "Essays" section] The heart which has been perfectly crushed with suffering until it is dead to all its desires will be so inundated with divine charity that it will stretch itself out, and wrap the world around with fold on fold of boundless, spotless, impartial love for every creature that God has made. This immensity of heart loves all nations alike; it is absolutely free from all bigotry, or caste, or natural prejudice, or political partisanship, or sectarian feeling. It is emphatically a citizen of heaven; it takes as much interest in the Kingdom of God in one place as in another; it feels as much interest in souls being saved in one denomination or one country as another. This may seem strong meat, and many Christians will disagree with these words, but when they reach this condition, they will find the foregoing words perfectly true to their experience. When we reach the deepest death of self, we love all creatures with God's Love, and as God Loves them, up to our measure; it is not so much we that love others, as it is that God Loves them through us. We become the channels trough which the Holy Spirit flows; He pours His Thoughts through our minds, His Prayers and Loves through our hearts, His Choices through our wills. He breaks away all the banks and boundaries of our narrow education, or creed, or theology, or nationality, or race, and takes us into the boundlessness of His Own Life and Feelings.

Another great benefit of perfect suffering is, an inexpressible tenderness. It is the very tenderness of Jesus filling the thoughts, the feelings, the manners, the words, the tones of voice. The whole being is soaked in a sea of gentleness. Everything hard, bitter, severe, critical, flinty, has been crushed into powder. Great sufferers are noted for their quiet gentleness. As we approach them, it is like going to a tropical climate in mid-winter; the very air seems mellow; their slow, quiet words are like the gentle ripple of summer seas on the sand; their soft, pathetic eyes put a hush on our rudeness or loudness of voice. There are many souls who are earnest Christians --- nay, many who are sanctified! --- who have an indescribable something in them which needs the crushing and melting of some great crucifixion. Their tongues rattle so much, their spirit is dictatorial or harsh, they measure other people by themselves; there is something in their constitution which seems to need the grinding into fine flour. It is well worth the crushing of hearts with an overwhelming sorrow, if thereby God can bring us out into that beautiful tenderness and sweetness of spirit which is the very atmosphere of heaven. This kind of tenderness cannot be voluntarily put on; it cannot come from training; neither is it a transitory sweetness, which is like a spring day intruding itself into winter; but it is that fixed and all-pervading gentleness of spirit which is like the fixed climate of the torrid zone. It is the finest outgrowth of perfect suffering.

Another benefit of complete crucifixion is the detachment from all earthly things which it produces. [see also, "Let, And Let GO! - ("Bind And Loose")"; in the "Essays" section] The mind has a thousand-fold attachment to the things in this world, which it is not aware of till they are ground to pieces by suffering. Did you ever notice how your soul stretches itself out into ten-thousand things of earth and time, and how the fingers of your thoughts grasp thousands of things?! Just look at your mind; for every friend you have on earth, there is a distinct attachment; for every piece of property you own on earth, there is a distinct attachment; for the ten-thousand recollections of your by- gone life, there is a particular sentiment or attachment; for all the scenes of earth and associations of time, there is an attachment; and besides all these outward things, look at that vast, invisible world inside your own self --- your own desire, and hopes, and dreams, and prospects, and gratifications for your self, your family, your church, your nation, your particular party; see how you have become attached to your own thoughts [let alone opinions! --- see also, "Just Whom Were You Expecting?"; in in the "Essays" section], until your heart seems to have a million springs to it which flow round and round countless objects in this world!

I am not speaking of things positively wicked; I am not speaking of things which are stigmatized as sinful; but of those things which Christian people recognize as innocent, and yet, in a thousand ways, they fetter the heart and bind it to earth. Perfect suffering will untie the heart, and gently loosen every cord that binds us to our foes or friends --- to all our possessions; to all the things of the past; to all attractive sights and sounds --- and give us such perfect inward liberty from everything on earth that the things of heaven can flow down into us, until we feel we are Citizens of the New Jerusalem a hundred times more powerfully than that we are the citizens of an earthly city or country. We feel deep in our hearts that, like St. Paul, we have already "come to an innumerable company of angels, and the Church of the First-Born, and the spirits of just men made perfect." The coming of the Lord is so real to us, our whole being is pervaded with the sweet, attractive powers of the world to come. Like the detached balloon, we float toward the supernatural. The heavenly world comes into us exactly in proportion as all the affairs of earth are emptied out of us, and nothing so perfectly empties us and detaches us as perfect suffering. It is in this way God makes our perfect crucifixion our crown of unfading joy.

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Luke 14:26 If any [man] come to me, and *hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and [hate not] his own life also, he *cannot* be my disciple. 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, *cannot be* my disciple.

Luke 14:33 So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he *cannot* be my disciple.

*Picture ~ G.D. Watson at Falcon Camp Meeting

[u]CHAPTER 8: "Fretting Over Ourselves"[/u]

There are two extremes of feeling regarding ourselves; one is the feeling of self- complacency, and the other is the feeling of self-abhorrence; and between these two extremes there are any number of feelings with regard to ourselves in which these two sentiments may be more or less blended. When we begin in thorough earnestness to follow Christ, with a definite view of being made like Him, it will necessarily make us meditate a good deal on Jesus. The more we apprehend of Christ, His Nature and Disposition, the more we see the infinite disparity between Him and ourselves; and when at times we get a full view of ourselves, there seems to be so many things in us that are incorrigible that we are tempted to despair of ever becoming like Christ. There is a good way and a bad way of grieving over our frailties. It is the policy of Satan, if he cannot fill us with self-conceit and self-complacency, to try the opposite policy of making us fret over ourselves.

There are various causes which lead devoted souls to chafe over their imperfections. One cause is that, by a subtle self-love, the soul desires to be good and fair and grand in its own eyes; it would love to look into the mirror of God's Law, and behold its reflection without a flaw, with the same sentiment that a handsome woman loves to behold the reflection of her beauty. This spirit of gloating over the beauty and symmetry of one's moral character is often alluded to in the Scriptures. The Lord Says of such an one: "Thine heart was lifted up; because of thy beauty thou has corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy appearance; I will bring thee to the ground!"-Ezk 28:17

God watches the finest motives and intents of the heart, and if we desire great degrees of perfection for our own admiration, God will Allow great trials and weaknesses to mortify us to all refined self-admiration.

Another reason why devoted souls fret over themselves is the failure to fully appreciate the most infinite meanness and blindness and deceitfulness of our human nature. There are capabilities of sin, and all sorts of unlovely things in our nature, which we have never dreamed of. Just to the extent that we see the ever-widening, deepening glory and beauty of Jesus Christ, we see the opposite in ourselves.

When souls first begin in the way of perfection, they think their defects are very few and very shallow; and after months and years of walking -WITH- God, even though their hearts have been cleansed from sin, they discover certain defects and infirmities still adhering to them, which they thought would never annoy them beyond their first fervors of love. They find irresolution in the will, and dullness in the faculties and sluggishness in their nature; such a lack of heavenly cheerfulness, promptness, warm-heartedness; many narrow thoughts; such a liability to be agitated and jostled by simple trifles of the day; such a facility of forgetting lessons we have already learned; such baby-ishness, and faintness, and pusillanimity of spirit, as we never expected would cling to us. Perhaps we never can see the infinite extent of the fall of man; it may be we shall to eternity be deploring it.

Could we, from the beginning, see into all the unsounded depths and crevices and hidden caves of our souls, and comprehend the greatness of the reality of full restoration to God, we might more perfectly be prepared to bear patiently with ourselves. There is the subtle desire to seem good in the eyes of others, for the sake of being glorious; most devoted souls have lofty ideals which they endeavor to reach. I know a very pious woman, very refined and beautiful in her manners. When she was seeking sanctification, she had an intense desire to be a model of a minister's wife; she had a lofty and a beautiful ideal in her mind. But in after-years, passing through great trials and afflictions and humiliations, she found that her petty ideal was broken over and over again, at least in her own estimation. The Spirit will not Allow us to fill the phantom of the ideal. God's thoughts are not as our thoughts, and when we lie in self-abhorrence at Jesus' feet, with all our religious ideals shattered to fragments, He sees His Ideal being carried out in us. Fretting over ourselves is a very subtle sort of self-righteousness. Self-upbraiding and calling ourselves hard names may seem like humility, but in reality it is spiritual pride!

The true medicine for our defects is a deep, quiet, patient hatred of self [Lk 14:26], which is very calm and peaceful. Any view of our faults which disturbs our quiet repose in Jesus is a wrong view. [1Cor 4:5, Phil 4:6]

God sees our infirmities infinitely beyond what we do; He pours over us an unceasing stream of Patient Love, in which there is no upbraiding, nor severity; and whatever breaks our quietness of spirit, our firm rest in God, is of the evil one. [Ro 14:23]

I have heard of family feuds, where people hated with such a settled and life-long hatred that the very name of the enemy was never mentioned, and no allusion made to him. This illustrates, in some sort, the calm, settled hatred we are to have for self. It is to be so fixed and so deep that we shall ignore self in everything, and keep our minds on the things of God, and when we see our defects, quietly leave them with Jesus, without being discouraged or agitated. Think how soon the conflict will be over, the trials all past! Think of the long bright years in heaven! Think of the time when every pain and mortification of this life will be forgotten in the sea of ecstasy, or else remembered only as a cause of Praise! The best death to self is where we can see everything mean and ugly and disagreeable in our lives, or in our composition, and look at it with quietness and sweetness, and a loving self-abhorrence which glows with fervor to Jesus, and at the same time does not chafe nor murmur with ourselves.

Thanks Mike,

I was reading this same book on another site and did a google search and there you were. Wow, thank you Jesus. I thought this little snippet by Brother Watson was appropriate to post.

Alone With God by G.D Watson

[b]We have to be alone with God in finding personal salvation. Others may be used as instruments in bringing conviction, light, help in various ways; but there comes a crisis, both in the work of regeneration and of sanctification, in which the soul must be detached from others, and deal only with God. How utterly impertinent are human words in such a crisis![/b]

We must meet our Jesus singly; we must apprehend Him for ourselves; He must speak to us with His own voice. In such an hour we gaze on the salvation promises, such as, "Thy sins will be forgiven thee," or, "I will, be thou clean"; but the words on paper need to be imparted into our consciousness, and to do this, they must be re-spoken into us by the Holy Ghost. No true soul will be satisfied with an inference of salvation, or a dead legal imputation of holiness, or the opinions of others as to our state; nothing less than God alone pouring His assurance into our spirits will answer.

The dear Redeemer Who loved us from eternity, and "formed us for Himself," will not leave the pining soul to the second-hand tinkering of others; He will closet us with Himself, and re-speak into us those living words out of His Book that have been spoken to seeking souls in every generation of the world. God longs to give each of us a perfect personal assurance of His perfect salvation. But we must be alone with God

Hi Ed, how interesting to re-cross paths this way... Just found his understanding tremendous, a true blessing, still am gleaning from all this.

[u]CHAPTER 9: "Little Things"[/u]

In the Kingdom of God, which is exactly the opposite to the kingdom of this world, things rank by the greatness of quality, and not by that of quantity. Our God proves His Divinity by the notice and emphasis He puts on small things. "Despise not the day of small things." --- "Because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities!"

There is no better way in the world to test every trait in a soul than by little things. Every Christian duty, every grace of the Spirit, every privilege of life, is being proved and manifested to the eyes of God and angels in things so small that we seldom take thought of them. It is the unpremeditated and instinctive actions and words that reveal the reality of what is in us, and not those large, conspicuous things for which we especially arm ourselves. The most essential grace for a human being is humility; God appreciates a soul in proportion to the depth of its humility more than all other things combined; but this very grace of lowliness of heart finds its appropriate home in small things. The sweetest things in the world --- the best prayers, the poorest self-denial, the tenderest words of sympathy --- by a delicate instinct of the Holy Spirit, hide themselves in little secret ways, as the turtle-dove will build its nest in the un-thought-of, lowly places on the ground. There are some great sorrows and sufferings that can be written out for the world to see; but the greater martyrs are those who have thousands of agonies in small and hide-away matters seen only by the Infinite eye. To suffer with a patient heart in things so common and small that people never think of noticing them is to glorify God in a high degree; for if we suffer in ways so concealed that no eyes but His can see it, then surely it is to please Him only. Fanatics and self-made martyrs like to show their sufferings to notice on a large scale, as a dog will make a loud howl over a small hurt; but a real lowly soul will suffer a hundred-fold more in silence and little things without advertising it, as the lamb will endure a great wound in silence.

There are times and places for great events and things, but in matters pertaining to perfect Christ-likeness of Spirit, the very greatness and splendor of large things hide God, and the creature is manifested more than the Lord. But in little things God has opportunity to show Himself; He is not smothered under so much magnitude and glitter, as electricity can show itself better at a small focus than by being spread over an immense cloud. There is no intrinsic harm in things being great, but we are so foolish that we let the greatness of things distract us from God. Just in the same proportion that all human things grow in size, they lose the Power of God. Great men, great learning, great churches, great sermons and fine music, great camp-meetings, even great holiness organizations --- anything great in the creatures --- soon absorbs so much attention that the sensitive Holy Ghost finds Himself slighted, and quietly hunts up little people and little opportunities, where God alone can get the glory. In every age of the world, the Holy Spirit has been traveling away from big things into the small, in order to find places where God alone shall be exalted. If we could always remain broken and contrite and little, God would always show Himself to us, and reveal His Personal Presence in the insignificant things of daily life, and the Holy Ghost would work marvelously through us in sweet and quiet ways, utterly incredible to the great and wise ones. God alone Knows when we are really little. Many will proclaim that they feel their utter nothingness, but in one hour after cannot peacefully and lovingly endure to be contradicted, or reproved, or slighted, or slandered. What we are in the sight of God, that we are, no more and no less, regardless of what men or saints or angels think of us, and regardless of what we think of ourselves. The Holy Ghost Knows when we are little, and His Abiding and wondrous Revealings will continue just so long as our infantile littleness continues.

In regard to our work, there is more real holy labor in the small than in the great things; for just see, in any great work there is human sympathy, man's praises, a field for enthusiasm and renown, a sphere for the display of gifts and zeal, and motive to arouse the natural heart; but in a little work wrought in obscurity, all these high things are weeded out. I do not say that a great work may not be done purely for God alone, but it furnishes a field for so much of the human; but in the hide-away and shut-in ways of life, our God gives us a walled-in garden to sow down with deeds and words and manners and looks, out of a loving, tender spirit, with no incentive but love, and no purpose but to please Him. A little work done for God to Know has in it a heavenly courage, a purity of intention, a sweetness of love, which is very difficult to put in a notable act.

We can show more self-sacrifice in little things than we can in great; because the occasions are more multiplied and the temptations to self-indulgence are greater. On the other hand, we should not be in scrupulous bondage to little things, for if we overmagnify little things, we put our souls in slavery, and the devil turns our flower-garden into a prison. Little things should serve two purposes for us --- to see how much of God's guidance and Presence we can FIND in them, and to see how much of Jesus-like love and service we can PUT in them. Every religious thing on earth will take rank in heaven just according to how much Christ is IN it!

[u]CHAPTER 10: "SIMPLICITY"[/u]

God's best gifts are the simplest, such as air and light and water and bread. So, in religion, the greatest things are unmixed love, pure humility, fixed obedience, a single eye to please God. A sunbeam refracted gives seven colors; that is complexity, which is the opposite of simplicity. The simple white light is infinitely more blessed and useful than the complex, colored rainbow. To be fond of complex things indicates childishness of taste. Complexity in religious life bespeaks a baby condition of moral nature. The more pure and advanced the mind is, the more it admires perfect simplicity in everything. Simplicity in the Christian Life is the state of transparency, unbiasedness; no mixedness in the desires or tempers or affections; oneness of motive, oneness of intention, where the conscience, desires, and will all flow one way in sweet agreement; where faith and hope and love exist without being mixed with their opposites of doubt and fear and hate.

But no definition of spiritual simplicity will satisfy the heart. The Holy Spirit, Who Is the God of simplicity, must reveal it to the eye of the soul. When the blessed Spirit softly unveils to all our inner perceptions the perfect simplicity of the Christ-life, the unmixedness, the unsullied transparency of God's Word and His inner Kingdom, there is a Holy charm and a sweet satisfaction to the mind beyond the expression of words. When all doubleness and tangled complexity of every sort is purged out of us, and when the Holy Spirit floods all our inner being with the same simplicity which is in Jesus, how it makes us love simplicity in everybody and in everything! We then have a keen appreciation of simplicity in character, manners, speech, worship, business. Anything extravagant, grand, pompous, puffy, stilted, far-fetched, loud, slangy, odd, smart, brilliant, or confused or complex, in experience, life, or expression, becomes very offensive. The soul that is living in sweet Oneness with Jesus will intuitively detect and recoil from everything that is mystical, shady, tricky or complicated. Such a soul abominates the secret lodges, the tricks of the trade, the keeping up of appearances, or anything subtle or selfish; it deals only with what is open, straightforward, and translucent. A person may have intellectual simplicity, which is the characteristic of all great minds, and yet, if he is not purified by the Holy Ghost, he will still be lacking in simplicity of moral nature. A person whose heart is rendered perfectly simple by the full indwelling of Christ will be inundated with simplicity in every other direction of mind, and manners and business.

Perfect simplicity of spirit is the heavenly shield against foolishness, fanciful forms of religious experience. When people fancy that they have found something startling and new, and profoundly hard to be understood, and transcendently fine in religion, it is always because they have left the old, eternal path of white simplicity and become tangled in Satanic fog. A soul that is possessed by the Holy Spirit seeks ever to live in an ocean of pure, tender love, and be full of good works; and it will instinctively avoid rush, unnatural, and over-strained views of religious life and duty. The Light the Holy Spirit pours into us is pure and white, not a red, startling aurora borealis; the visions of God He gives to us are lucid, wide calm, elevating, sweet, restful and loving, and not those complex, wild, and overstrained notions which are always indicative of fanaticism. The Holy Spirit will turn us into the simple, quiet, non-combative lamb, and not into some great, towering extraordinary giraffe. He will mold us into the lowly, uncomplaining, unostentatious dove, not into some enormous, far-famed albatross.

Thousands of people ruin their religious experience by forming fictitious and abnormal notions of advanced [extraordinary] experiences. They stretch and pray; strain after some unique, great, dazzling monstrosity of spiritual life, utterly outside of the mind that was in Jesus; and the devil is ever looking out to gratify such un-Scriptural desires with counterfeits of grace. They lose their dove-like simplicity, and are soon tangled up with all sorts of absurdities. The Bible reveals to us simplicity of desire --- "Thy face, Lord, will I seek..."; simplicity of the will --- "This one thing I do..."; simplicity of motive --- "Do all to the glory of God..."; simplicity of Guidance --- "Lead me in a plain path...", because the enemy is on the complex path. Let us ever seek a Jesus-like simplicity, not only in our experience, but also in work for Him; never attempting startling and brilliant things; never wittingly drawing notice to ourselves; never overtaxing ourselves with huge enterprises; never parading the feats we have done, or the extra things we are going to do.

Oh, for that perfect, guileless simplicity of heart and life which befits with equal grace an angel or an infant, and makes both of them feel at home with each other!

[i](A brief note here, this one had a particular practical application for this rambler ...)[/i]

[u]CHAPTER 11: "LOQUACITY" (Excessive Verbalism)[/u]

Talkativeness is utterly ruinous to deep spirituality. The very life of our spirits passes out in our speech, and hence all superfluous talk is a wast of the vital forces of the heart. In fruit- growing, it often happens that excessive blossoming prevents a good crop, and often prevents fruit altogether; and by so much loquacity the soul runs wild in word-bloom, and bears no fruit. I am not speaking of sinners, nor of legitimate testimony for Jesus, but of that incessant loquacity of spiritual persons, of the professors of purifying grace. It is one of the greatest hindrances to deep, solid union with God. Notice how people will tell the same thing over and over; how insignificant trifles are magnified by a word of words; how things that should be buried are dragged out into gossip; how a worthless, nonessential is argued and disputed over; how the solemn, deep things of the Holy Spirit are talked of in a light, rattling manner; until one who has the real baptism of divine silence in his heart feels he must unceremoniously tear himself away to some lonely room or forest, where one can gather up the fragments of his mind, and rest in God. Not only do we need cleansing from sin, but our natural human spirit needs a radical death to its noise and activity and wordiness. See the devil effects so much talk.

First, it dissipates the spiritual power. The thought and feelings of the soul are like powder and steam --- the more they are condensed, the greater their power. The steam that, if properly compressed, would drive a train forty miles an hour, if allowed too much expanse, would not move it an inch; and so the true unction of the heart, if expressed in a few Holy Ghost selected words, will sink into minds and remain forever, but if dissipated in any rambling conversation, is likely to be of no profit.

Second, it is a waste of time. If the hours spent in useless conversation were spent in secret prayer, or deep reading, we would soon reach a region of soul-life and divine Peace beyond our present dreams.

Third, loquacity will inevitably lead to saying unwise, or unpleasant, or unprofitable things. In religious conversation, we soon churn up all the cream our souls have in them, and the rest of our talk is pale skim milk, till we get alone with God and feed on His green pasture until the cream rises again. The Holy Spirit Warns us that, "in multitude of words there lacketh not sin!" It is impossible for even the best of saints to talk beyond a certain point without saying something unkind, or severe, or foolish, or erroneous. We must settle this personally. If others are noisy and gabby, I must determine to live in constant quietness and humility of heart; I must guard my speech as a sentinel does a fortress, and with all respect for others, I must many a time cease from conversation or withdraw from company to enter into deep Communion -WITH- my Precious Lord. The cure for loquacity must be from within; sometimes by an interior furnace of suffering that burns out the excessive effervescence of the mind, or by an overmastering Revelation to the soul of the awful majesties of God and eternity, which puts an everlasting hush upon the natural faculties. To Walk in the Spirit, we must avoid talking for talk's sake, or merely to entertain. To speak effectively, we must speak in God's appointed time and in harmony with the Indwelling Holy Spirit.

[u]CHAPTER 12: "SORROW FOR SIN"[/u]

All true sorrow for sin must be imparted to us from God, for He alone knows just how we should feel toward evil. There is something so wretched, so inconceivably awful, in sin, that it destroys our very capacity for any correct feeling toward it; and the Holy Spirit must impart to us, from the pure sensibilities of God, that holy grief, that fierce principal of sorrow for sin, which is the spring and safeguard of true godliness.

There are a great many degrees of sorrow for actual sin committed which are mingled with feelings of remorse, dread, guilt, fear of wrath. this degree of sorrow may have a great outburst of manifestation, but it is not the deepest form of grief for sin.

When there is a sorrow for the deep, hidden sinfulness of the heart, the very existence of God's love in our hearts makes us to grieve and mourn over the corruptions of our fallen nature. It is by the light of pardoning grace shining in us that we see the vileness and stubbornness of secret depravity; and our grief for our hidden sinfulness is keener and deeper than ever for our horrible actions, because this degree of sorrow is touched more strongly with God's sensibilities to sin, and because we more sensitively feel the utter meanness and stubbornness of the essence of sin. It is out of this sorrow for heart-sin that there springs thirst for universal purity.

Then, after we are pardoned and purified, even though the sting of guilt and the inward motives of sin are removed, there is planted in us, by the Holy Spirit, a finer and continuous sorrow for the dreadful fact and effects of sin. After we have been washed in the precious Blood, there will be times in holy devotion when the spotless character and goodness and majesty and tenderness of our Lord will so open up to our view that the hot tears will burst from our eyes, and a deep, tender, melting sorrow for the sad fact of our sin will go all over us.

This is not a human, but divine kind of sorrow. In human sorrow over sin there is a chafing, fretting, recrimination, self-denunciation, which is in itself sinful; there is denouncing sin in such a severe, sinful spirit as to add to the very sin that is being denounced. And so there is a poor, human sort of grief over sin by which we lash and fret and call ourselves hard names, which is only a heathenish form of grief. When God takes us up into sweet, holy union -WITH- Himself, we will see that it is as great a sin to fret and rage at ourselves as at our fellows. This deep, fixed sorrow for sin I now speak of is God's sorrow for it --- the sorrow that Jesus had for the sinfulness of sin, from the hour He clothed Himself in our flesh and bones. This kind of sorrow is deep, quiet, melting; it can blend itself with holy joy and praise, just as you can see a purple tinge in the finest electric light. This highest and Christ-like form of sorrow for sin may not always push itself up into our distinct consciousness, but if the Spirit possesses us, it is always in us as the unrecognized tones in music, or the shaded back-ground to every picture of divine grace. The more thorough our sorrow over sin, the more persistent will be our progress in holiness.

[u]CHAPTER 13: "IN DEEPER DEGREES"[/u]

The same truths we learn or experience in the beginning of religious life can be so broadened and intensified to us by the Holy Spirit that they seem new to us; hence the same terms we used to express ourselves by are inadequate to convey the deeper meaning of our hearts. Suppose a young child, a grown person recently converted, a perfected and anointed believer, a disembodied saint in heaven, and one of the oldest angels, were all standing together, and should all repeat in concert the words, "God is love!" What an almost infinite difference there would be in the meaning of those words to each of the five persons respecting the words. While the words are the same, yet, in the apprehension of their significance, there is as great disparity as between a drop of water and the ocean.

There are very few enlargements of the heart in Divine things till the believer passes the Jordan of sanctification; and even then the great expansions and uplifts into the supernatural life of the Holy Ghost will depend on many conditions.

All the words of God are susceptible to innumerable degrees of meaning, so that the same passage can be fulfilled in us over and over, in a deeper measure, until it hardly seems the same Scripture it used to be; and even in the resurrection and glorified states, we will find the words of the Bible accomplished in us in a measure beyond all our present dreams of their meaning. This thought is eminently true when applied to the manifestation of Christ to our inner spirit.

Just suppose we could open every Christian mind on earth, and get a correct picture of what each one has of the Lord Jesus in his or her heart. What a picture gallery it would make! What the blessed Jesus is to us in our heart and mind, measures what we are to Him and for Him. It is the operation of the Holy Spirit upon our perceptions, mostly in secret prayer, by which Jesus grows on us, till all our early views of Him are eclipsed by deeper and sweeter visions of His person and character. Of this widening perception of Christ in the mind, Faber very sweetly sings:

"Thou broadenest out with every year,
Each breadth of life to meet,
I scarce can think Thou art the same,
Thou art so much more sweet.

"With age Thou growest more divine,
More glorious than before,
I fear Thee with a deeper fear,
Because I love Thee more.

"Changed and not changed, Thy present charms,
Thy past ones only prove,
Oh, make my heart more strong to bear
This newness of Thy love.

"Jesus! what hast Thou grown to now?
A joy, all joys above,
Something more sacred than a fear,
More tender than a love.

"With gentle swiftness lead me on,
Dear God! to see Thy face;
And meanwhile in my narrow heart,
Oh, make Thyself more space!"

The newness that Faber speaks of is not really in Jesus or His love, but in our newer apprehension of Him. Oh, what an unlimited field of work the Spirit has to open up all our capabilities to the perceiving and receiving of the riches of Christ!

It often happens that, just after coming through some great loss, or crushing sorrow, or dark trial, that the heart will get a broader, brighter, sweeter view of the Lord than ever in the past, as if the stretching of the soul by intense suffering has qualified it for an outlet into the depths of God.

There are riches in Jesus which can be opened to us in prayer, for which there are no corresponding words in our language; traits of His character, insights into His God-man personality, glimpses of glory, emotions imparted from Him, unutterable charms revealed to us, which work swift wonders and enlargement in us, but which we are unable to interpret to anyone else. Paul's vision into God may have been a thousand-fold deeper than anything I ever had, when he exclaimed, "Oh, the depth of the riches!" But after eighteen centuries in a sea of glory, what must be his vision of those riches to-day!

Inasmuch as every truth of Scripture is susceptible to being manifested to our souls in an almost unlimited degree of pungency, clearness and force, we should diligently seek for the Holy Spirit to continually increase these things in us. The depth and altitudes of Divine things can not be had by chance, or under the delusion that God will work them in us anyhow, if we only lie passive in His hand. There are many times and things in which our only true work is to lie passive in God's will, but in other things it requires thoughtfulness, constant, persevering co-operation -WITH- the Spirit, to reach the ever- widening fullness of His promises.

As our days go by, the feeling of repentance, of sorrow for sin, of self-nothingness, of gentleness of thought, of tenderness for others, of the vividness of Jesus and His coming, and the reality of all eternal things, should steadily grow in brighter colors and hotter emotions in our souls. Only see how dull and sluggish all our nature is toward Divine realities; that even after we have been converted and sanctified, the awful effect of the morphine of sin has left such a deposit of indolence and mental stupidity in us as to demand incessant zeal to realize the brightness and power of heavenly things.

Soon -- oh, soon! -- we are to stand right in the blazing realities of God and eternity, and all our faculties are hardly half awake. Do we often think of that inexpressible hour when we shall gaze on our precious Jesus for the first time? Have we seriously determined in union -WITH- the Holy Ghost that all spiritual things shall be more and more real to us? God looks at the determinations of our hearts, and if we want the Holy Spirit to make things powerful to us, we must determine that He shall.

[u]CHAPTER 14: "BENEFITS OF TEMPTATION"[/u]

Grace has to work a great many miracles in us before we get far enough along to heartily sanction the words of St. James, to "count it all joy when we fall into divers temptations." But there is a place of such victory and union with Christ that the soul can really find a source of joy from every trial and temptation through which it has gone. It is almost impossible for us to see any benefits of being tempted while we are passing through them; the sensibilities are so pierced by fiery darts, the mind is so distracted by evil suggestions, the will is so beset with opposite motives, the rattle of spiritual musketry and smoke of battle obscures the vision from seeing any blessing likely to come out of it. Nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them who are properly exercised thereby. Among the benefits of being tried by temptation, we may mention the following:

1..... Resisting any given evil to which the soul is tempted will induce an increased hatred of that sin. The very habit of fighting any particular sin will form a habit of loathing for that sin. It is watched as an old and bitter foe. In long and bitter feuds between families there is not only hatred for the principal agents, but hatred for their children, their relatives, their property. So the persistent fight against some old ruling passion, some old besetting sin, arouses in the soul a universal revenge, not only against the old sin itself, but against all its family relatives, and a jealous hatred to all the insidious steps that lead to that sin. The holiest saints in all ages have been those who were the most sorely tempted. Surely it is a great blessing to loath sin, and a still greater blessing to loath that particular sin that has done us the most damage. It is God's design that we shall have the most perfect victory on the very points where we have been the weakest. This requires a limitless crucifixion of self and a complete possession by the Holy Ghost. But it can be done, and has been done, in thousands of cases. And such victory has been brought about by awful temptations to some sin which developed a boundless, unrelenting hatred for that sin.

2..... Temptation drives us to a deep, serious study of ourselves; it makes us take ourselves all to pieces, to analyze our affections, our wills, our motives, our propensities; it makes us search the quality of our actions, thoughts, words; it makes us scrutinize our real chances for heaven or hell; it makes us dig in solitude to the very secret foundation of our character. Temptation compels us to study the awful nature of sin; it makes us trace the danger of wrong-affections, of evil thoughts, of improper words; it opens our eyes to see the hell-fire that stealthily sleeps in so-called "little sins". To be thoroughly tempted is the pathway to a thorough knowledge of ourselves and of the malignity of sin.

3..... Temptation makes us see our true nothingness and weakness. It withers our cleverness, cauterizes our smartness, teaches us true humiliation and self-abasement. It clips the rattling talkativeness from our tongues, gives us a real, healthy hatred of ourselves, and shows us our demerit in a strong light. It leads us to patient endurance. When we are first tempted, we chafe and fret; when it comes back still stronger, we whimper and whine; the next time, we try to fight the devil with our fist, we bluster with our will-power against being so assaulted; at the next time, we break down and cry like a child whose Sunday clothes have been bespattered by a bad boy; then we wonder what we shall do; then we half despair of getting complete victory; at last we quiver long-sufferingly in the hand of God, and patiently look to Jesus as an afflicted child looks to its mother's face while its wound is being dressed. But for these sever temptations, the soul would go skipping along, gloating over its own pretty piety, full of self- admiration. As a sever case of small-pox will prevent a pretty face from standing before a mirror, so terrible temptations prevent holy souls from admiring their own graces.

4..... Temptation leads us into real heart-felt sympathy and compassion for others. It takes deep trials to soften and widen the sympathies. Every tree has it special parasites to attack it, and it does seem that severity is the special parasite that fastens itself onto religion in a human soul. If a cold, condemnatory saint is put through an unexplainable conflict of soul that makes him roll on the floor in agony for hours at a time, while his body is wet with perspiration, when he comes out of that sulphur bath, if he comes out on the Christian side, there will be a tenderness in his judgment and a broadness in his compassion which no camp-meeting hallelujahs could ever impart.

Blessed are they that endure temptation till not only sinful self is purged out, but till the last form of righteous self is gone, and the soul is taken out of it furnaces into a SuperNatural embrace of the Holy Spirit.

[u]CHAPTER 15: "THE DAILY CROSS"[/u]

It is only after we have been crucified to the carnal nature that we can bear our daily cross in the true spirit of our Master. It is by the denial or death of sinful self that we enter the state of perfect obedience in which the daily trials and crosses can be borne in deep fellowship with Jesus. The very order of the words of our Savior seems to indicate the steps of experience. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." Here we have, first, crucifixion of the natural self-life; then the purified soul bearing its daily sufferings and hindrances, which brings it into constant walking and fellowship with Christ. It is this daily cross which leads the sanctified soul into a deeper death to self, according to its love and fervor of obedience. What is our daily cross? It is that one or more things which are unavoidable in our lives, and which produce suffering of body or mind or heart. It is that thing which in our poor judgment seems to hinder the easy flow of our religious life. Sometimes our cross may be composed of a combination of things, but as a general rule, it is some one instrument or cause of suffering to the soul. Were there no suffering of some kind involved, then there could be no cross at all, for the only thing in a cross is its pain. The outward form of the daily cross may change with years, or the same cross may continue till death; but in some form it abides. It is as impossible for the true saint not to have some cross as it is to walk in the sunshine without having shadow. The Holy Ghost gives us to understand plainly that the multitudes of jolly, ease-loving, and easy-going religionists, who bear no daily suffering with Jesus, are only sectarian-born religious bastards, and not really Kingdom-born souls. (see Heb 12:8) It is your daily cross that makes you weep more than any other thing; that sends you to frequent prayer; that leads you to ransack the promises; that makes you cry out, like Jesus, "Father why is this?"; that causes you to put both arms around the neck of your Savior in yearning love; that makes you sick of earth and self; that gives you wistful longings for heaven. Oh, precious old homely, daily cross, what deep, tender, far-reaching effects thou has wrought through all these prayer-paved years!

There is an hallucination about getting free from our daily cross which needs to be broken; it is a daydream worked up in our minds, a beautiful vision that hangs just ahead of us, that someday we will be rid of our cross, that we will have no painful annoyances, and that our feet can fly unimpeded toward heaven. Alas! that so many saints should get their eyes set on this will-o'-the-wisp dream. If you want deep union with Jesus, getting rid of your cross is the very thing to defeat it! There is a better victory than freedom from the daily instrument of pain, and that is to pass into the ocean-depth of the Christ-life where every trial can be borne in exactly the same spirit that Jesus bore. Boundless, tender love is the condition for triumphant bearing of our daily cross. When our cross has driven us so deep into the warm ocean-heart of Jesus that we are kept melted and flooded with quiet, lowly, tender, yearning love for God and His Kingdom, then the cross will have proved its own balsam, and then every trial will be fuel to the flame of love. To love the cross is understood by only a few Christians. People fancy it means loving the cross on which Christ died. No; it means loving that very cross in our lives that drives us into deep one- ness with Christ; it is to meekly, patiently, lovingly embrace to our inner heart the very principal of self-abnegation and self-nothingness. It is often the case that devout Romanists wear hair-cloth and iron or knotted cords next to their skin. All that is too superficial; it does not enter deep enough. Jesus did no such foolish thing. To bear our daily trial as Jesus did, we must take it into our very hearts love, and bear it meekly, quietly, lovingly, as unto God, and not to man.

How long it takes to accept our daily trial as a gift direct from the hands of our Lord! His eyes are on us; He notices our inner feelings, thoughts, and choices as to our cross. The spirit in which we bear our trials here will mark the grade of our standing in the world to come. It is persevering prayer that we get on the sunny side of every sorrow, and on the triumphant side of every trial.

It is the sharp grain of sand cutting its way into the oyster that is enveloped with the life- juices of the creature and turned into a pearl; so our daily cross, cutting its way into our life's core by being folded round and round with many tears and loving prayers, becomes in our souls the very pearl of Christ-likeness, and more valuable than all our chosen blessings. The Holy Ghost can reveal to us the very disposition in which Jesus bore His daily trials, and when we bear ours in the same spirit, then indeed do we have fellowship with Him!

If it does not please our Father to remove our trials, it is because He wants us to seek and receive an overflow of tender love that will bear us on over and through the trials and in spite of them. Pure, limitless love is the only true victory over trial. Intense love for Jesus is the only water that can make our thorny cross ripen its fruit; so do not cut down your cross, but water it with more love and prayer, and wait for its golden apples.

[u]CHAPTER 16: "THE DOMINANT SOUL QUALITY"[/u]

Every human soul has been organized as to possess some one dominant trait, or some combination of traits, or some quality in a certain degree which is not duplicated in exactly the same proportion, perhaps, as in any other soul in creation. God is forever manifesting His exhaustless wisdom and power in producing creatures through all the ages which are unique and different in some respects from all the other myriads, that each soul may be a chosen vessel to show forth His gifts and glory and beauty and wisdom in a peculiar and individual manifestation. In our present condition, with our nature fallen and ignorant, and often, even in the highest state of grace, so hedged about with ignorance and short- sightedness and infirmities, we cannot begin to see the existing beauty and holy dignity and glory that God designs for each one of His loving and obedient children.

There are seven colors in the rainbow. Each of these colors can have ten thousand different shades, and each of these shades can be blended with the other colors and shades of color in untold millions of colors and shades of colors. So out of the element of spirit, soul, and body, which enters into the formation of man, and from the five senses of the soul add the intellectual faculties, and the grace of the Spirit operating in the heart, the Holy Spirit can combine these mental and spiritual qualities in an infinite number of forms and degrees, so that each saint shall possess some signal mark of divine favor, or some exhibition of divine beauty, or some form of love, which will distinguish him from all other creatures in the universe. This will make each one of the countless millions of heaven to have a special sacredness to God, and a special attraction for us. This truth is set forth in the different gems and precious stones which compose the twelve foundations of the city of God, as described in the twenty first chapter of Revelation. We shall find that each of these twelve precious stones, mentioned in that chapter, have a special virtue and quality of chemistry and beauty of its own, and when we learn the deep interior individuality of the twelve apostles, we shall find that each of those apostles had a unique quality --- some dominant trait of moral character --- which corresponds precisely with the quality of the various precious stones in the twelve foundations.

It is interesting and helpful to us to recognize this dominant soul quality in the Lord's people. Each person we meet makes a special impression upon our minds and sensibilities which no one else makes. The more thorough a person is saved and filled with the Spirit, and united with the divine Mind, the more perfectly will their deep inner personality be brought out and manifested by the Holy Spirit. Some of God's children impress us with love, others with illumination, others with great force, others with faith, others with conviction, others with sweetness of spirit, others with humility and resignation, others with authority and regnant power, others with quietness and retirement. Could our eyes be sufficiently open to see things in the full light of the Holy Spirit, and our keen spiritual sensibilities be perfectly open to the play of spirit-waves, or the detection of spiritual odors, we should find an unspeakable joy in the variety and fellowship of all God's saints. This will be one of the joys of heaven. The soul is larger than the body, and the spirit is larger than the soul. There is a spiritual atmosphere which surrounds us, as the air surrounds the world, and we can feel the touch of this soul-atmosphere.

This dominant quality of an immortal mind not only comes out in social contact, but even in books, the writer will put the dominant quality of his mind. In reading the writings of Wesley, I am always impressed with his will-power. Whatever I may read from his pen, in his journal, or sermons, I am always impressed with that firm, tireless, overmastering, persevering, conquering will-power which was in the man. This has always been the effect of his writing upon me, so much so that it tires me to read very much of his writings at a time. I believe Wesley had the strongest and purest will of any man in a thousand years.

When I read John Fletcher, I am impressed with an intense, burning eagerness for God, and of a consuming desire for the fullness of God, and tireless, incessant spirit of prayer for the heavenly filling. This is the dominant quality of his writings upon me.

When I read Madame Guyon, I feel the quality of utter self-abnegation, self-renunciation, and deep, fathomless abandonment to God. This quality pervades her poetry, her biography, her writings; in her domestic life, in prison, at all times, the reigning trait of her soul seems to be annihilation of self.

In reading Fenelon, I am impressed with great gentleness and sweetness of spirit, and a flexible, yielding, tender, compassionate thoughtfulness and heavenly sweetness. It seems to pervade, like a divine odor, everything he touches.

In reading Faber, I am aware of a great illumination and wonderful discernment unto God and the human spirit, and clearness, the white heat of devotion, the very poetry of light, the purity and gentle melody of sunbeams and stars and crystal fountains; such insights into God; such glowing visions of the Trinity; such cloudless perception of things in heaven. But it is the light of a hot sun flaming with devotion, and not the light of a winter moon.

The writings of George Muller predominately impressed me with patient prayer. He is known as a man of great faith, and yet the all-pervading quality in his writing to me is that of patient prayer --- the attitude of waiting on God and finding out His will before one step is taken. This is a very high type of faith, for there are thousands of different aspects and degrees of faith.

Dr. Cullis, with whom I had the pleasure of personal acquaintance, pre-eminently impressed me with a child-like, simple trust. I found it always easy to believe God in his presence. He seemed to carry an atmosphere of trust along with him. There was in Dr. Cullis a gentleness, sweet, child-like playfulness and infant-like trust which seemed to have nothing arduous in it.

Dr. Sheridan Baker had to me the dominant quality of well-poised accuracy and precision. His words, his behavior, his writings, his business transactions, his plans, his whole life and expression, seemed moulded in a beautiful, well-balanced precision; nothing redundant, or extravagant, or narrow, or little, or outlandish, or absurd. Everything in the man seemed as beautifully poised as the blue dome of heaven. Look at the way he managed his business; disbursed his money. Look at his writings; can you find one foolish, extravagant, or superfluous word? He was, in a very eminent degree, a man of wisdom and heavenly accuracy.

Inskip impressed me all the time as a warrior and leader, man of unbounded magnetism, a Bonaparte in the Holy Ghost. He could sway thousands of people as easily as a lion sways a cat. He could arouse a vast audience into a foaming sea of enthusiasm with waves of white-capped excitement breaking on the shore, and in a few moments could quell them to a placid lake, whose tiny ripples of low-breathed prayer were hardly audible on the beach.

I have met humble and saintly women, who spoke only a few words; but there was a faint quality of hid-away quietness in God which came out of them, and impressed me for days and months like the sweet minor strains of some delicate instrument in a great orchestra.

Every flower has its own perfume, every gem its own luster, every bird its own note, every eye its own peculiar luster, every heart its own regnant quality; and if we will give ourselves up utterly to the possession of the Holy Spirit, and seek constantly to be filled more and more with the Christ-life, God will make each one of us a chosen vessel of some precious gift or spiritual quality for the manifesting of His will to others. It is useless for any one to try to exert a good influence. All such is miserable machinery. It is our place to walk with God, live a continual prayer, be flooded with the gentle Spirit, seek to please God, and He will see to it that a subtle fire shall always proceed from us, which will burn itself indelibly into other souls in such a manner as to glorify God.

[u]CHAPTER 17: "ALONE WITH GOD"[/u]

Over and over, deeper and deeper, do we have to learn the meaning of God's Words, until the faint perceptions we first had of them seem as dewdrops compared with the fathomless ocean we find in them at the last. "And he was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him till the break of day." All elect souls pass many times this station of aloneness with God, and they find that the wrestling always lasts till the breaking of day.

We have to be alone with God in finding personal salvation. Others may be used as instruments in bringing conviction, light, help in various ways; but there comes a crisis, both in the work of regeneration and of sanctification, in which the soul must be detached from others, and deal only with God. How utterly impertinent are human words in such a crisis! We must meet our Jesus singly; we must apprehend Him for ourself; He must speak to us with His own voice. In such an hour we gaze on the salvation promises, such as, "Thy sins will be forgiven thee," or, "I will, be thou clean;" but the words on paper need to be imparted into our consciousness, and to effect this, they must be respoken into us by the Holy Ghost. No true soul will be satisfied with an inference of salvation, or a dead legal imputation of holiness, or the opinions of others as to our state; nothing less than God alone pouring His assurance into our spirits will answer.

The dear Redeemer who loved us from eternity, and "formed us for Himself," will not leave the pining soul to the second-handed tinkering of others; He will closet us -WITH- Himself {"shut-up unto God!"}, and re-speak into us those living words out of His Book that have been spoken to seeking souls in every generation of the world. God longs to give each of us a perfect personal assurance of His perfect salvation. We must be alone with God in the matter of suffering. The One who loves us best fits the furnace to our frame, and never once duplicates the pattern for any other soul. There are innumerable degrees of suffering among God's chosen ones, yet in each case it is unique and personal. The ingredients of suffering are of infinite variety in kind and mixture, but the end to be accomplished is the same. God will not allow us to pick our crosses, or to exchange them with our neighbor. Oftentimes our chief cross is born with us into the world, and stays with us through all vicissitudes of life, and all the operations of grace, till we have washed it thousands of times with our tears, till at last, conquered and mellowed and sweetened into utter tenderness of spirit, we smile upon the rough old instrument, and praise God for all its painfulness to us. Some forms of suffering have the community feature in them, and can be shared by others; but our very choicest sufferings, those that accomplish God's individual purpose in us, those that most thoroughly test us and unite us to His will, these are private property, into which no other ever enters but our sympathizing Jesus. "I will lead the blind in a way they have not known." The Lord selects for each of us those crucifixions which will most perfectly mortify us, and reduce us to our lone nothingness. In the earlier stages of deep interior suffering we foolishly fly to some chosen creatures for sympathy and help; but in taking our soul-sorrows to earthly friends, we are apt to find one of three results --- either God permits them to be cold and uninterested in us, or we find them loaded with woes of their own, or else they do us more harm than good by superficial, or fanatical, or unheavenly words. Our sufferings should lead to four things --- to detach us from creature- comforts by driving us to bury our souls deep in the bosom of God; next, to take Jesus in as a partner of our pains, that "in all our afflictions He was afflicted;" next, recognize the presence of God in every step of our trials; and fourthly, that we be so thoroughly softened by our sufferings as to have an unlimited tenderness for all other sufferers of every kind. The very best and most fruitful of our mortifications are those in which God locks us in alone with Himself, and thereby saturates us with the Holy Spirit. In matters of divine guidance and spiritual understanding, God often hems us in alone with Himself, and deals with us and reveals His will to us in ways and things that our friends can have no comprehension of. When we are not in communion with God, He will lead us by secondary agents; but the closer we enter into union -WITH- Him, the more directly and exclusively He guides by His Spirit.

If we walk in constant fellowship -WITH- the Spirit, we will have illuminations into providence and duty for ourselves personally, which our best friends may not always see. "He knoweth the way that I take, and when I am tried I shall come forth as Gold." (Job 23:10) God always has some child passing through the experience of these words. How little other people understand of the real inner life we are living! Those who think they know us so well, and can give us volumes of advice, often know us very little. The best of saints misunderstand our faults, just as the ungodly misunderstand our graces. God will find a thousand ways to detach us from creatures and to wed us to Himself alone, for He is determined that no one else shall be our God! No human being on earth, even the best of saints, can be any real benefit to me in love or comfort or counsel, except as they are the channels of God to me; whatever they give me out of their own human nature will soon prove poison to my real well-being. There is not one atom of balm in the universe except from Jesus. When God truly leads along any given path, the outcome will evidence it to be of Him, however queer or wrong it may seem to many who are wise and prudent. As Faber sings:

"Ill that He blesses is most good,
And unblest good is ill,
And all is right that seems most wrong,
If it be His sweet Will."