SANCTIFICATION, ETC.

SANCTIFICATION, ETC.

I do not know of anything that you should surrender, but I feel that the danger is, lest, when one has surrendered much, there should be the feeling that there is no occasion for any more. I remember once saying to J.N.D., with reference to the Lord’s words, “For their sakes I sanctify myself” (John 17: 19) — ‘Then sanctification is immeasurable’.

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘immeasurable’. You will see my thoughts fully in the next ‘Voice‘’.

^[p. 60] I have been dwelling very much on the way in which every one’s course is affected by his goal or aim; I mean, what he is running on to. In fact, you can tell any one’s goal by his course. You cannot rise higher than your goal. I do not mean heaven at the end, but the daily ultimatum of your heart. Nothing is a goal that I do not see. I quite agree with you that it is life and its peculiar enjoyments which we so require to know more of. I believe many a one is hammering away at the old man and the flesh, who is not advancing one bit in spiritual life. It is like the Romish confessional, after every confession you can begin a new score! You may batter the old man to dust and then indulge him a bit! But when it is life and the joys of God that you are absorbed with, you may be sure that the old or the first man, who was shut out when you were in the joys of the life of Christ in His sphere, is not speedily relished when you return to man’s sphere. There is nothing I long for more than to be more habitually ‘beside’ myself, ‘no spirit left’ in one through beholding His glory. Oh, it sets one so loose to everything here, for what entrances one is apart from everything here.

I have a subject much on my mind — the difference between man’s mind and Christ’s mind. Man’s mind, however beautiful, never rises higher than man. Christ’s mind always thinks first of God. It is the lack of this which creates all our difficulty in judging of things. Man can have beautiful conceptions and sensibility, but it does not rise above man. The mind of Christ always begins with God, and this is “wisdom”. “She openeth her mouth with wisdom”. When one hears any one’s speech, one ought to be able to tell whether he speaks from man’s intellect or from Christ’s mind, which has been given to us. As the apostle says — “But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2: 16).